‘A landmark.” “A sight to behold.” “Perfect.” The 270-metre high chimneys at the ESB power plant at Poolbeg certainly draw the superlatives. The trouble is, none of this beaming praise is coming from the people who will, in just a few months, decide the future of the stacks: the ESB and Dublin City Council.
Poolbeg’s ‘Pigeon House’ plant has generated power for the city since 1903; with these chimneys puffing away for more than 30 years now. It didn’t take long for Dubliners to grow attached to them either. There they are, ten seconds into the video for U2’s ‘Pride.’ There they are, at the end of none-more-Dublin movie The Van. There they are, being painted blue in a 1990s ad for the GAA, an ad that espouses the love of local heritage that’s recently been stirred to life in fans of the stacks.
Later this year, Poolbeg Generation Plant will be decommissioned, along with two others in Wexford and Kerry; it’s part of an agreement with the energy regulator to reduce the ESB’s dominant position in the marketplace. Reports started to surface in late-2009 that ESB management was in favour of demolishing the stacks, despite being aware that there would likely be public opposition. “We don’t know where [those reports] came from,” Kieran O’Neill of the ESB told The Dubliner. “The stacks at Poolbeg Generation Plant are still in use and no decision has been made about their future.”
Catherine Kilbride is a local resident who takes regular walks along the strand at Sandymount. When asked what the stacks mean to her, she makes an outline of the skyline with her hand. “They are part of this,” she says, “part of the landscape.”
Damien Cassidy has lived in Irishtown for 50 years, and is head of the National Conservation and Heritage Group. He’s a staunch supporter of the campaign to keep the chimneys. “They are a landmark, recognisable from any approach to the city. They are also of architectural significance, because we have lived with them down here and welcomed them. And having built them, what use would there be in taking them down? It’s a load of nonsense.”Fans of the stacks will get more vocal over the next few months as work at the plant winds down, but they’ve already set up the must-have accessory for any modern campaign: a Facebook group. With around 2000 members, Save Dublin’s Candy-Striped Chimneys includes a member who notes that the stacks are the first thing you see as you fly into Dublin. “How will we know we are home if they are gone?”
Unfortunately Dublin City Council doesn’t agree; it has already rejected a proposal to put a preservation order on the chimneys, saying they weren’t of “sufficient architectural, social or historical value.”
Neil McCullough of McCullough Mulvin Architects agrees. “I don’t think the Poolbeg chimneys are a particular monument, as an architect or as a Dubliner. The discussion about keeping them represents a kind of psychosis of identity in the city, where people hold onto anything familiar as a security blanket in dangerous times. I would be much more concerned about the whole Poolbeg area and the plans for it. It represents an important part of the most original aspect of Dublin, its relationship with the bay and the sea.”
Alan Breen from Dublin City Council confirmed their decision not to list Pigeon House as a protected structure. But he did offer one glimmer of hope for opponents of the demolition. Even though it’s now up to the ESB what happens, “a separate application for demolition would have to be made and that would be assessed on its own merits.”
Maybe the last (pragmatic) word should rest with Dublin’s favourite tour guide and historian, Pat Liddy. He is in favour of saving the stacks but, as the long ladders’ rust begins to bleed into the striped tubes’ already grimy exterior, he’s not alone in thinking they need some repair. “Who is going to pay for them? It’s to be regretted that they would be gone off the skyline, but maybe we have to bow to the inevitability of that.”
Great to see that Dublin City Council is still protecting us from having to decide what might constitute social or historical significance. Surely there's an elite department for that? Also, I've been meaning to talk to Neil McCullough about that bloody psychosis of identity that the Parisians have with that stupid bloody tower... what's it called again? And the Romans, with that wreck of a colisseum. And as for that Egyptian Sphinx? What a psychotic crowd. Security blanket my arse. It is part of what generations have grown up with, ergo it is social culture. Also much loved, although that is probably irrelevant
Posted by: Nick McGivney | February 01, 2010 at 16:49