The Oirish subsidiary of the Anglo-American Corporation

Back in June, the English satirical magazine Private Eye did an extremely funny take on the Bloomsday celebrations in Dublin. It was accompanied by a map relating present day Dublin to the sights and events of Bloomsday -- one place had become the Bank of Sinn Fein and another was allegedly now a Starbucks. [unfortunately the Eye web-content is still pretty skimpy so we only have memory to work from].

It was telling how accurate the parody was that the only correspondence it generated was to do with whether an old picture used in the piece depicted the Cairo gang -- a group of British intelligence agents killed by Michael Collins. But the mockery of the new Oirish Dublin compared to its Joycean counterpart was dead on.

Anyway, another feature of the map was a supposed Dublin bypass, which was shown as a one-inch wide swathe through the centre of the city. While well capturing the mania of our National Roads Authority to build a motorway in the least appropriate place, the parody has already been trumped by reality. Because the geniuses who run Dublin's light rail, the Luas, have decided to connect its two lines (why they are not connected now reflects much previous idiocy) and the preferred route goes right through Trinity College Dublin.

The current plan calls for taking a chunk (subs. req'd) of the Provost's Garden, which will destroy the current frontage of 1 Grafton Street and transform the context of a walk known to just about everyone who has been to Dublin. In what we assume was an intended provocation, a letter writer to Thursday's Irish Times wanted the line actually run across the interior campus, to provide the riders with a view of a college they would otherwise never see (we report, you decide).

This all comes in the same week as the news that Dublin is losing Bewleys but gaining Harvey Nichols. And to cap it all, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern said that Dubya's win was better for the Irish economy, because Kerry's policies would have been more restrictive for US inward investment in the Republic. We're increasingly wondering if the real Ireland is now to be found in Northern Ireland.