Diarmuid Wilson (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

As a young person from the country, I came to Dublin on the bus with my mother and few friends from the area. The one thing that struck me was the buzz of that huge street. I am sad to say, however, that that has changed. I agree totally with Senator Marie-Louise O'Donnell that there is no beauty in it anymore. There is no plan and there do not seem to be ideas. In recent weeks we heard about the closure of that famous store, Clerys, where, as Senator Paschal Mooney said, country and city people came to shop. They also did their shopping in other premises off O'Connell Street. Now, however, they are afraid to walk down it. It is a horrible term which I hate, but there are a lot of the "walking dead" on the street. People are terrified to walk down that thoroughfare which has become the fast food capital of Europe. It is time we woke up and did something about it because the city spreads out from O'Connell Street. If we were to get it right, clean it up and revitalise it, everything else would follow.

I welcome the Living City initiative that was originally announced in October 2012. I regret that it took until a few months ago to get it up and running. However, it is only paying lip service to what is really needed. I was struck by what Senator David Norris said about the late Albert Reynolds in having a budget speech running to three and a half pages. If I recall correctly, when the mandarins in the Department of Finance were finished with them, one premises benefited.