Fintan Warfield (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I was delighted to see the Robert Ballagh piece. I was in Cork, which, to my shame, I rarely get to. I was speaking at Cork Institute of Technology, which is stunning. I went into town afterwards and got lunch and a coffee. I was walking around town and to my disgust, I could not find any public seating. I looked around and just saw older people sitting on pillars. I ventured into the space in front of the gallery but there was still no seating. I wondered what the space was for and decided to go in and lie down on one of the gallery benches, make a nuisance of myself and rest there for a while because I had already had a coffee. When we do not have public seating, it tells people that it actually costs something to go to town. A person must go into a private business to sit down and reflect. Thankfully, the Crawford Art Gallery filled that void.