City Hall’s cultural mask slips with Beanstalk mural removal

Bradley Bytes – A sort of political column by Dara Bradley

Philistinism prevails at City Hall. It was always going to.  For over a year now, Galway City Council has projected itself as a purveyor of culture, and arts and heritage.

And in fairness, they’ve made a good stab at it with the bid for Galway to become Capital of Culture in 2020.

But the mask has slipped.

And how ironic – and unfortunate – that the killjoy city planners and the Council would show their true colours in the week before the arrival of the 2020 judges.

The local authority has finally ‘won’ its battle with Claddagh Jewellers on Mainguard Street, and the popular ‘Beanstalk’ art on the shop façade has been removed.

The Council’s cultural butchers – anti-art, anti-creativity, anti-anything-that’s-a-bit-different – had their way.

Unfortunately, everyone loses with this shameful act.

The pen-pushers who pushed this through probably wore blue Galway 2020 wristbands as they signed off on the destruction of the mural.

They’re a determined bunch, we’ll give them that. They’ve been the best part of three years trying to have the mural painted over.

How fitting that they’d have their way just as Galway is being judged on its suitability to be a city of culture.

The popular mural was a beautiful, colourful mainstay of the city streetscape.

Tidy Towns judges singled it out for praise. But somebody somewhere in the bowels of City Hall decided anything that brings joy to people’s lives and that brings colour to Galway and sets it apart from just ‘any other city’, should be removed.

No doubt they will argue they were just implementing planning law. But the law is an ass. And so is the Council, for allowing this to happen.

Let’s hope the Capital of Culture judges don’t notice the Philistines have taken over at College Road.

Progress report

After the furore over his appointment to the HSE West Regional Health Forum, we hope Galway City Councillor Niall McNelis makes more of a contribution to meetings than he did at the AGM.

You will recall Niall took Catherine Connolly’s seat at the Forum, after Collette, her sister, was shafted, and not allowed fill the seat despite that being the tradition for co-opted councillors.

Catherine, who is now in the Dáil, was a thorn in the side of HSE management, as she consistently probed about the inadequacies of the public health system.

Niall, her replacement? So far, not so much.

At his second meeting, the AGM, the Labour Party Councillor had tabled zero written questions and made not a single contribution to the meeting. Oh, and he left early.

A bit like the health service itself, he can only get better.