Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill’s decision to abandon the decade-old plan to relocate the Rotunda to Connolly Hospital in Blanchardstown is welcome and overdue. Nobody should underestimate the difficulty of upgrading a functioning hospital on a protected site at the heart of a Georgian square. Parnell Square is among the earliest and finest of Dublin’s Georgian squares, and the encroachment of 20th-century hospital extensions has already compromised it considerably. Dublin City Council has been slowly, haltingly advancing plans for a cultural quarter anchored by a new city library. Both projects display a too-familiar combination of inertia, incoherence and shifting political priorities.

Source: The Irish Times March 05, 2026 06:32 UTC