On a sunny autumn morning, a small crowd has gathered on the corner of Fleet Street and Bedford Row in Temple Bar opposite the Oliver St John Gogarty pub. They are a group of 15 urban sketchers from Britain, Canada, the US and Germany, over on a weeklong trip.
As they work, other tourists and locals stop to look at their drawings. They chat pleasantly, and move on.
If someone was looking for an image to advertise Dublin’s cultural quarter, this is it. It’s almost too perfect. It also couldn’t be further removed from the image often portrayed in media and on social media of Temple Bar.
In recent months, the area has been the focus of numerous reports of attacks on tourists, with some hospitalised as a result of their injuries.
RM Block
Kayla Jones, who organised the art trip, was unaware of these incidents, but had heard Temple Bar could “be a bit leery”.
“I suppose what you hear is that it’s the drinking capital of Europe,” she says.
“But being here, it’s been quite lovely. We’ve been out in the pubs, there’s been a great atmosphere, nice food. We haven’t had any trouble. We have had a lot of people coming up to us, but they’ve all just been curious about what we’re doing.”
But what is the experience for the permanent population living and working in the area?
“You don’t move here expecting a quiet life,” says Declan O’Brien, who has lived in Temple Bar for 20 years.
“I’ve always been a bit of a townie, I suppose, but what I like about Temple Bar is the cultural stuff. All the independent local retailers; it doesn’t get talked of enough. Go down Crow Street, and every single shop is an independent trader. There’s great personality among these shops and there’s a great community here, which probably doesn’t get spoken about as well.
“There’s lots going on that isn’t based around drink. There’s markets, during the summer there were free concerts. I was at a class last night in the Gaiety School of Acting. There’s lots of alternative tours, people are interested in the history of the area, not just pubs and pub crawls.”
While O’Brien is clearly an enthusiast, he’s not blind to its problems.
“The pandemic was a turning point, there was a visible lack of policing and that vacuum was filled by antisocial behaviour.” He references the gangs of youths that descended on the city during Covid-19 lockdowns, often involved in street brawls.
“This year we have seen an increased police presence, and that has made a difference.”
The use of apartments for illegal short-term letting is to O’Brien now the bigger threat to Temple Bar he says. “We need a massive clampdown on that. It’s making it very hard for people to live here.”
Two years ago the Aston Quay and Temple Bar Business and Residents’ Alliance formed in response to the “high levels of open drug dealing and street crime” in the area, particularly in its back lanes. The alliance now represents almost 50 businesses and residents’ groups.
Stephen Kennedy of Copper+Straw coffee shop on Aston Quay, who chairs the alliance, said the problems had “significantly” receded.
“The corner of Aston Quay was a real hotspot in terms of open drug dealing and drug taking, and a lot of antisocial behaviour. It’s significantly better than it was, that doesn’t mean the situation is entirely resolved – we do see drug dealing and drug use on a daily basis, but in comparison to how things were, it is definitely better.”
He attributes this in particular to the introduction of the high-visibility Garda foot patrols earlier this year.
“They are a complete game changer. Everybody’s shoulders dropped as soon as those measures were introduced, you just feel more reassured and a bit safer. We didn’t even need to be told they had started – we could see it; there were just more guards on the streets.”
Recently, however, alliance members have alerted him to a reduction in those patrols.
“The feedback is that foot patrols seemed to have dropped off a little bit. The businesses I spoke to said things are still better, but over the last six or eight weeks, there has been less of a presence. That’s a worry, because the reduction of antisocial behaviour was almost immediate and then if there’s a little bit of a drop-off the rise is very noticeable once again.”
Policing alone won’t solve Temple Bar’s problems, he said.
“We need to do more in terms of the city centre’s public realm, making it more attractive and more pleasant.”
He references the need for CCTV cameras and improved lighting, particularly in the lanes. “The lanes are certainly one of the trickiest and thorniest issues to deal with. They’re dark, they’re dirty, they’re not really used except for deliveries and bins. Introducing planting, street art, gives people a reason to use the lanes and creates natural surveillance as a deterrent to antisocial behaviour.
Restaurateur Niall Sabongi is less convinced of the success of the high-visibility patrols.
“One of our staff called the guards the other night, they got through an hour later, that’s not good enough.”
In May 2023 Sabongi spoke out about repeated break-in attempts at the Seafood Cafe on Fownes Street, with his windows smashed several times.
“I haven’t had any incidents recently. The big problem we had with gangs of kids, that’s definitely dropped off, but when you need the guards, there’s no one. You might see one guard a night.
He realises other parts of the city may not have great sympathy for special pleading for Temple Bar, but he said, given its importance to tourism it does require additional resources.
“Temple Bar, whether people like it or not, is the tourist area, it’s silly to pretend it’s not. The spotlight is on it all the time, so when incidents happen here it is amplified, and word will travel that Dublin is not safe, that it’s rough, and it’s a kip, when it’s really not.
“We need people to feel safe, there should be a zero-risk approach. There isn’t any risk walking down the Champs-Élysées at 2am, you should be just as safe at 2am walking past McDonald’s in Temple Bar.”
On Temple Lane South the glass front of Beard and Barnetts barbers is badly cracked.
“Mostly, it’s people coming out of the bar with a pint glass and just throwing the glass, not people trying to break in,” co-owner Ben Chubb says.
It’s a part of Temple Bar life he accepts with remarkable equanimity.
“We’ve left it like that about three years. It’s smashed now, so someone isn’t going to smash it again.”
A daytime trader, he feels he escapes some of the worst excesses of Temple Bar.
“Sometimes people come into the shop and refuse to leave, or drunk people come in looking to have a shamrock shaved into their head, but do you know what? Temple Bar has its faults, but most of the time it’s fine.”
Martin Harte, chief executive of the Temple Bar Company, believes there is a disproportionate focus on crime and antisocial incidents in Temple Bar.
“There are 68,000 people passing through Temple Bar every day. Incidents that have happened are really, really unfortunate, but I think we do have a tendency to talk up issues sometimes, that statistically, aren’t particularly big issues.
“There’s a tendency to focus more on Temple Bar because of the brand. A story in Temple Bar get legs quicker than the story in Templemore.”
Much of this is driven by orchestrated online campaigns to “ramp up fear” about public safety he says.
“I do think a lot it this comes from the extreme right-wing media and social media trying to stoke up fear to serve their own agenda.”
