Council says it does intend to reopen long-closed playground and coffee kiosk at Bridgefoot Street Park

Two of the main attractions in Bridgefoot Street Park in the Liberties are off limits at the moment.

Metal fences block off the playground in the western corner of the park, which opened in 2022. Some of the railings, around the giant slide, have collapsed.

That playground was closed for planned maintenance in January, “for a couple of days”, said a Dublin City Council parks post on Facebook.

Across the other side of the park, the black shipping container which used to host the Mug Shot coffee kiosk is shuttered.

That was closed too, at the end of last year, with the operators PACE pointing to an uptick in drug dealing around the amenity.

So, on Thursday morning, there weren’t many people around. Most were just cutting through, heads down and headphones in, as they walked between Bonham Street and Bridgefoot Street.

Tracey Sands, one of those passing through, said she regularly asks Dublin City Council what its plans are with the closed amenities and the park.

“I am regularly emailing them,” she said, pausing to talk. She pushed her sunglasses, with chunky chains, up onto the top of her head. 

She tags them in TikTok videos, too. But she hasn’t had much of use back, she said. 

A written response issued to Sinn Féin Councillor Ciarán Ó Meachair a day earlier said the council is currently in its “final stage of post-installation certification” for the playground. 

That should be done by the end of June, it said. 

And, a council spokesperson said on Thursday that it is “in the process of engaging a new cafe operator for the unit”.

But what the park also really needs in general is more regular events going on, said Gayle Cullen Doyle, chair of the Oliver Bond Residents Group. “More positive stuff needs to happen in it.”

A much-campaigned for amenity

Ó Meachair, the Sinn Féin councillor, said that the current problems in the park are particularly frustrating given the thirst for green spaces and playgrounds in the wider Liberties area.

Indeed, “it’s an incredible park. It’s a park that was hard-won,” said Labour Party Councillor Darragh Moriarty on Thursday.

Residents and councillors campaigned for more than a decade for a park to be built on the site, rather than all housing, as had been the plan.

Moriarty wonders though – with all the great benefit of hindsight – if some of the design elements were as thought-out as they could have been, he said.

There are many hidden areas which make it hard to police, he said.

Cullen Doyle, chair of the Oliver Bond Residents Group, said she is still frustrated that small sport pitches, which would have been added amenities, disappeared from early designs to the later ones. 

And also the safer road crossings, mentioned during the planning process, have never happened either, she said.

A zebra crossing across big, busy Bridgefoot Street would help kids in her complex to use the amenity, she said.  “That should have been put in before the park opened.”

They also just need more organised events for the park, like a monthly market, she said.

Ó Meachair said that the council has been looking at trialing a security guard in the park, as part of a wider pilot across a few city green spaces. 

That pilot is underway, said a council spokesperson on Thursday. The council’s Parks Management has procured a mobile park warden service, they said.

Bridgefoot Street Park is one of 12 parks in the city centre patrolled by private security from Bidvest Noonan.

“This service liaises with the Gardaí when necessary and its visible presence and regular patrols have had a positive effect deterring drug dealing and other anti-social activity,” they said.

Ó Meachair said that he is reserving judgment on the idea, for now. 

When the council trialled patrols to stop tourists from groping the Molly Malone statue, it didn’t really work, he said. But “I’m willing to see a trial of it, and I would like to see it go well.”

Meanwhile, the guards have tried to be present more around Bridgefoot Street Park in the last few months, he said, to discourage drug dealing.

But “if it moves out of Bridgefoot Street Park, it’ll go somewhere else,” he said. Residents around Bridgefoot Street deserve some respite though, he said. 

Cullen-Doyle, and others, though still stress the importance of more activities to invite people into the park.

The best way of curbing anti-social behaviour is having pro-social behaviour, said Moriarty, the Labour councillor.

On Thursday, there were neat rows of potato plants and lime-green baby strawberries and purple-topped chives in the corner of the park given over to the Taplin Field’s community garden.

There were also posters still up for last September’s free fitness classes on poles.

Sands, who was passing through, says that there are people in the community who work to get things happening into the park. She too brings people into the park. 

She runs playful walking tours, she said, of green spaces in the area, for grown-ups and kids called  “Our People, Our Parks, Our Past”. They often start on Bridgefoot Street, she says.

As she sees it, reopening the playground would change a lot in getting the space busy again, she says.

Indeed, “shutting the playground that length of time is an absolute disgrace,” said Cullen Doyle. “And now we’re coming into the summer.”

Ensuring that the park thrives won’t happen overnight, says Ó Meachair, the councillor.

It requires the Gardaí, and youth intervention, and the council to play a role too, he said. “It needs more multi-agency engagement on this.”