Roofing our streets is not such a bad idea

For most of this year, we in the West have been cursing in the relentless rain. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, last week we learned that the driest part of Ireland has beaten us to the punch on publicly funded anti-rain devices, while giving a town centre a commercial boost at the same time.

Yes, believe it or not, last week a new retractable street roof was officially launched on Monck Street in Wexford Town. You might think that the sunny South-East has it good enough already: great land, a motorway most of the way from Dublin to Wexford without a toll in sight, and now a shiny new roof over the last town in Ireland that seems to need one. This latest news feels like the Government deciding in the budget to air drop umbrellas to Spain. It would make you want to throw your hat at it, if that wasn’t especially unwise in the circumstances.

What’s the story behind it? Monck Street is a narrow street in Wexford that is best known for its nightlife. It is named after General George Monck, who, you might have guessed, did not give his life for the cause of Ireland’s liberty. Monck was an English soldier and politician who changed sides during the English Civil War of the 17th century more times than you or I have had hot dinners. The reward for being on the right side at the right time was various big jobs, including ruling Ireland for a brief period. Part of that gig saw him having a street named after him. There was a proposal to change the name of the street post-independence but the good people of Wexford took the Castlebar rather than the Ballina approach to these things, and so Monck Street it has remained.

The good General was a good man to see which way the wind was blowing, so he would no doubt be delighted to see himself associated with what is billed as the first such project in Ireland, a retractable roof canopy extending over the whole street, over 80 metres in length. The hope is that it will breathe new life into Wexford’s night-time economy. It will certainly – as this article is proving – draw some attention to Wexford Town, marketing it as the home of 'Ireland's first fully covered street.'

There was a lot of fanfare surrounding the launch, which was right and proper as it took a long time to finish and it had to navigate some stormy weather before it got – ahem – off the ground. When first mooted as an idea, the outlook for it was as grey as the skies that prompted it. There were many showers of complaints about the design and the materials being used. It created something of a tempest when the spend in excess of €1.5 million loomed into view. Discontent grew into anti-cyclone proportions as the deadline to complete it was oft extended. Social media did its best – as it does on all things – to spread despair, division and negativity. But finally, the sunshine broke through just as the cover came out, with all those involved only too delighted to bask in the shade.

The whole idea came about not so much because of the great desire to protect people from the rain, but out of a need to do something distinctive to draw people to an area. We all know how hard it is for smaller commercial businesses to do that these days. The commercial businesses of Wexford have been rightly quick to promote this as just another reason to visit this interesting old town – and in fairness, it is a very interesting place to spend some time. But in a crowded if not covered marketplace, you have to do something distinctive to gain people’s attention. And so projects like it have been popping up all over Ireland and this is only the latest innovative example. What can we learn from it here?

The pity of course is that this exact idea was suggested for Castlebar by Pádraig Flynn way back in the 1990s. It’s a common thing in European cities and even in small towns. But, unfortunately, the great idea did not get the support it deserved and was never acted upon. And so Wexford Town can now – all these years later – claim to have Ireland’s first fully covered street.

For Castlebar, the absence has surely contributed to the trade migrating away to what is – ironically – a much more weather-exposed part of the town. But there was easy parking down there and the rest – you might say – is Castlebar’s recent history.

But while it didn’t happen before in Castlebar, this news from Wexford should bring the idea, and ideas like it, back to consideration here in the West. Of course we do lots of innovative things in towns and communities all over the West – the Emigrant Park in my hometown of Kiltimagh only the latest example – but this project in Wexford is an example of the kind of commercially-focused initiative we should aim to develop. We want to support small businesses and service providers to thrive, and that has to be built around how people in 2024 live their life, not how it was done in a past which is, by definition, behind us.

We talk a lot about the decline of our towns. Too often though it seems to me that we are talking about forms of commercial life that are dead and gone. To save our town centres, we must think about the future and how people live life now. People like to both socialise and shop at the same time, and they like do it in comfort and ease, and so a roofed street is an obviously good idea in that context.

If done well it would do much more than that: such a street could be a place for the community to come together – for a Christmas market, to mark the success of a sports team or individual or to do some other collective thing as a community.

Of course, the roof alone won’t do it, because people nowadays want more than that. The project in Wexford didn’t start with a roof. It started by pedestrianising the street. Yes, taking cars off streets. If that has dimmed the enthusiasm of anyone for the project, you need to wake up to what really draws people into a town to spend time there. Cars are, of course, essential in the West of Ireland but that’s not the same as saying they should therefore be allowed to dominate every street of every town. There is always a good argument for the status quo, but the downside is that that gets you nowhere but where you are.

A pedestrianised and roofed street would be a great way to bring people and business back into our town centres. So, in which towns and where in them could you roof? Candidates in our local elections could well start a good debate as to which streets in time might make for good locations for projects of this type. Where in Ballina, Castlebar, Westport, Claremorris?

And if your response to all those questions is ‘yes, but’, you can continue giving out forever and a day about our declining town centres, but that will be an exercise as futile as cursing the rain.