As someone who gives walking tours around Shandon, there is a need to have a proper inner city renewal plan. For too long places like Shandon, Barrack Street are limping on..indeed only for the Shandon Area Renewal Area group, volunteers, Cork Community Art Link…Shandon Street would be further down the road of dereliction…indeed such groups have added to the creative hub of the city. We need to build more of such groups.

Barrack Street is more or lost except for the traditional pubs that survive on student trade.

It always seems to me that there is no vision for such streets, no way forward. Shandon Street should be recognised officially as key heritage quarter.

History is oozing out of this area… and despite a plethora of best practice examples out there, there is a huge disconnection between its sense of place and its modern day economy.

In Shandon Street and other areas we need to create an attractive place to live, work and visit; to safeguard, protect and enhance the built heritage and promote a sustainable, diverse and integrated residential and business community.

For example I would like to see a summer heritage programme of events implemented for the area. There are great buildings in the Shandon Street are but they are not appreciated enough and harnessed enough and not celebrated enough so that they can play a part in the life of the inner city.

That is the same as the Good Shepherd Convent, the building and the site was not appreciated enough by all partners in it… the site is secure now but now it is too late for it..  it is now an abandoned and burned heap of heritage with no plan for it…the city needs a vision for such heritage markers and when I say that I’m thinking of the longest building in Europe, Our Lady’s Hospital which needs a plan and needs to be secured.