Maurice Fitzgerald

A literally very large protest at Dortmund this evening - a continuation of the nationwide protests in Germany against proposed new security measures.

Did you know Dublin almost had a giant steel-lattice sculpture of a man wading in the Liffey, just 30cm shorter than the Statue of Liberty? In August 2007, the Dublin Docklands Development Authority fast-tracked a proposal from British artist Anthony Gormley (of Angel of the North fame) for a 46m (150ft) human figure based on casts of his own body. AI mock up image below. Internally it was referred to as The Iron Man / The Colossus, though it never received a public name. The structure would have stood 30m east of Seán O’Casey Bridge, 12m out into the river, towering 8 metres taller than Christ the Redeemer in Rio. Gormley described it as “a charcoal drawing against the sky”. Pretty poetic, but the plan was for it to be unlit and painted black, meaning against Dublin’s typical weather it would often appear as a massive dark silhouette looming over the quays. What’s astonishing is that An Bord Pleanála actually granted planning permission. Infuriatingly this was done without public consultation, thanks to the DDDA’s special “fast-track” powers under Section 25, which bypassed normal planning rules. Local groups like the East Wall Residents’ Association and St. Andrew’s Community Centre objected immediately but too late, because it had already been greenlit. The projected cost was officially around €1.6m, but internal assessments suggested €4m+ once river-bed foundations, prefabrication, transport, and long-term river safety monitoring were included. Construction was to take place in London, with zero Irish fabrication or labour involved, before being shipped to Dublin in parts for a three-month assembly that the DDDA openly admitted would cause major disruption along the quays. And yes, it would have required constant monitoring to prevent ships from colliding with it. Then came the recession. The DDDA collapsed financially and was eventually shut down.The sculpture quietly disappeared from the agenda in 2012. Personally, as much as I admire some of Gormley's work, the idea of spending Irish public money to build a giant English-made statue of an Englishman’s body, using English fabricators and English engineers, to loom over the city with no public input raises a few questions. Was there really no Irish sculptor, no Irish fabricator, no Irish metalworkers capable of producing a monumental piece? Or was the boom-era mindset simply that bigger and imported meant more modern? I’d love to hear your thoughts.