Office of Public Works starts ball rolling on GPO redevelopment

Wednesday morning in the GPO Arcade, a woman sits outside The Art of Coffee café, feeding bits of her breakfast bagel to the small dog at her feet.

At the table next to her, two tourists have just crumbs left on their plates, as they look over a pamphlet for a bus tour of Dublin.

The floor below is patterned mosaic. 

Above, the large glass dome roof is a grotty pale green. The white paint of the walls just beneath it is chipped and splattered with streaks of black dirt.

The arcade is part of the General Post Office (GPO) complex.

The front of the building, where the Proclamation was read by Pádraig Pearse on Easter Monday in 1916 and a Republic was born, remains the entrance to a functioning post office.

Behind it, accessed from Henry Street and Prince’s Street North on either end, is the arcade, with a tunnel of shops, eateries and a beauty salon.

“The place needs a facelift,” said The Art of Coffee shop co-owner Ruslan Mocharskyy on Wednesday morning. Although, “"as long as I'm compensated and my staff are looked after", he says.

He points to an empty unit down from his business. It should be full and bustling, he says.  

Anything that can make the place more attractive would only be a positive, he says. “It’s such a beautiful part of the city, it should be thriving.”

Mocharskyy’s wish is a step closer. 

This week, the Office of Public Works (OPW) quietly nudged forward the process of redeveloping the GPO, including the arcade, issuing a tender for quantity surveyors to carry out a feasibility study.

The documents include few details, but they do confirm the likely future uses for the historic building.

The outlines

A project brief, put out with the tender, says that the OPW is assessing the redevelopment potential for the GPO complex in “a manner that will respect its character, enhance its relationship with the surrounding streets, and improve its functionality”.

Subject to engagement through a public consultation process, it says, the OPW anticipates that it will have some, or all, of a cluster of future uses. 

Those included keeping a post office, a significant cultural use or uses, public realm enhancements to draw people in, and high-quality government offices on the upper floors. 

And, “reimagined retail components along Henry Street and in the GPO Arcade”, it says.

This is music to the ears of Tanya Murray, owner of Ultimate Hair & Beauty salon, at the Prince’s Street North end of the arcade, she says.

“It’s gone very tatty,” she said in her shop on Wednesday. “I’d love a regeneration, it’s well needed.”

She has noticed a decline in footfall in the area, which has impacted her business since the pandemic, she says.

Figures circulated to city centre businesses by DublinTown, the representative group, on Wednesday said the total pedestrian movements to the business district for the last 52 weeks was up 0.5 percent on the previous year. 

But, the figures said, footfall on Henry Street for those same periods was down by 2.9 percent.

Murray says that her salon has been there 33 years and is well-established with customers. But passing trade has fallen, she says.

Customers, older women, who used to come in to get their hair done, and then spend the day in town, say they are headed straight home after their appointments, she says. “They just don’t feel as safe anymore.”

There has been a noticeable increase in Garda presence around the area especially in the mornings, she says. But nevertheless, she says, anti-social behaviour remains an issue.

Unreliable garda figures make it difficult to say whether the city centre is more dangerous, or is just perceived to be more dangerous, than in the past.

Still, Murray says she hopes a regeneration would help bring new life into the arcade and its surroundings.

“You see arcades like this in every city in the world, and they can be beautiful. This just needs cleaning up, badly,” says Murray.

Back and forth

The notion of redeveloping the GPO was first touted in the October 2024 report from the Dublin City Centre Taskforce, chaired by David McRedmond.

The taskforce, charged with developing a plan to revitalise the city centre, suggested redeveloping the iconic structure as a major public building.

A decision on the GPO’s future use was to be made by the end of Q1 2025, the report said. Proposals included the “creation of a world class Museum of the Irish Nation, the relocation of RTÉ, or conversion to a major government department”.

The government officially backed the report in June and approved a roadmap for delivery of its suggestions. 

Among them, the “redevelopment of the GPO as an ambitious and historic flagship project with cultural, retail and office components”.

After the announcement, Sinn Féin Leader Mary Lou McDonald TD labelled the plans – focusing in on the mention of offices and shops – as a “shameful betrayal of Ireland’s proud revolutionary history”.

During a Dáil debate on 25 June, Justice Minister Jim O’Callaghan fired back at Sinn Féin, saying they had misrepresented the government's statements.

“It was stated that the GPO complex will be redeveloped as an ambitious flagship project, as a mixed-use development with a combination of cultural, retail and office components, befitting the national historical and cultural importance of the site,” the Fianna Fáil TD said.

Councillor Micheál Mac Donncha, of Sinn Féin, said the alarm was triggered by the government’s talk of retail units, and that it was unclear whether the government meant adding more, or revamping what’s there in the arcade. 

Sinn Féin is aware shops already exist in the arcade, but the vagueness about what the government were intending was of great concern, he said.

If the plan, as set out in the tender documents, is to enhance the shops and businesses already in the arcade and facing on to Henry Street, as opposed to turning the building into a large mall, Mac Donncha says that would be okay.

The cultural space, and offices upstairs, would be welcome, he says. “If that’s what they stick to anyway.”

Mac Donncha says he would also like to see the museum that is currently located within the GPO expanded.

Keeping office spaces in the upper floors of the GPO is a welcome idea to Jennifer Towell, manager of Clark’s shoe store, at the Henry Street entrance to the arcade.

The offices used to house 900 An Post staff members, but they relocated to North Wall in 2023.

Those staff had added to the atmosphere and footfall, she says, and have been missed. Getting those offices full and thriving again would be a huge positive, says Towell.