Ireland has two theme parks – Tayto Park and Dublin City Centre.
And the management of the one on the Liffey are having trouble with “the staff”.
You see, the persky natives hit on a way of helping the 4,300 adults and 2,800 children without a home in our capital.
They started hanging coats off the railings of the iconic Ha’penny Bridge.
This has not gone down well with theme park management at all.
It’s hardly the sort of thing they want the precious tourists or the international media seeing.
Bad enough they have to step over children being fed by charities on Grafton Street on their way to their hotels.
Showing the kind of rapid reaction Dublin City Council has not exactly been legendary for in the past, our city fathers stepped in within 24 hours of the story getting out to demand Dubliners stop leaving coats for homeless people.
They even started removing them – not 24 hours before Storm Atyiah was due to make life for anybody out of doors very difficult.
How dare you Dubs put out warm clothes for the homeless. In the middle of winter. Two weeks before Christmas.
Down with this sort of thing and ho, ho, bleedin’ ho.
The council says it’s a “health and safety matter” which would be hilarious if it wasn’t so feckin cynical and transparent. This is about the optics, the PR.
They don’t want to see pictures, stories and video news showing one of Dublin’s great landmarks being draped in warm coats for homeless people.
They don’t want the BBC and CNN doing a story about this. They don’t want the tourists asking awkward questions. Not when they should be spending their cash on aran jumpers and €7 pints.
Old coats hanging on the Ha’penny Bridge as winter rain falls...ordinary Dubs, despairing of their leaders, trying to do what little they can to help their fellow citizens.
Here brother, take my coat, at least it’s something.
It tells the story, doesn’t it?
It sums up a decade of failure and inaction in a way 100 official reports could never do.
And this is what the people who run our capital and our country get angry about.
Not the insane rents, the daily struggle of working people to keep a roof over their heads, the over 10,300 people on the streets or in emergency accommodation.
No, they get angry about some old coats hanging in a tourist spot.
Because those empty coats tell the story of empty promises.
