Ugly Ireland

Over the last couple of months a quiet revolution has been taking place on the south side of Dublin. While the DART has been closed at weekends, to allow for work on making stations more accessible for disabled passengers, some of the ugliest structures ever erected in Ireland were being built.

In the rush to complain about how train services were to be suspended every weekend while stations were being made accessible, it seems that we all took our eyes off the ball and never actually examined what was about to be done. Once the stations were closed the work went on quietly and without public discussion. The result has been that bridges have been built along the train line which can make your eyes water with their sheer ugliness.

The two at Blackrock and Booterstown wouldn't look out of place playing a starring role in a space shuttle launch, with all their glass and gleaming white metal. They could stand proudly propping up the rockets until the countdown, burning up on take off. But along one of the most frequented shores of the country, they are truly hideous, dwarfing everything around them and dominating the landscape. The most amazing thing is that they have hardly been remarked upon since. Maybe people think they would offend disabled people by complaining. Don't worry, before sitting down to write this I checked with a disabled friend.

"The worst thing about them," he said, "is that we (the disabled) will get the blame."

But then in Ireland ugly buildings are all around us. Architecture is not a priority for Irish builders and developers. In fact most house builders don't even employ an architect if they can get away with it. The evidence of that can be seen in housing estates up and down the country.

As a nation we don't do towns very well. It is almost as if we are subconsciously trying to compensate for the beauty of the rural parts of our island, with the sheer ugliness of our buildings. Just think of the ring road around the city of Galway or the outskirts of Killarney – or many other towns – for their sheer awfulness.

In Dublin there is a long and inglorious list of ugly buildings, to which the railway bridges can now be added.

Top of the dung heap has to be Liberty Hall, the hideous trade union headquarters next door to the Custom House. This monument to bad taste is not even particularly functional inside, a bad layout limits the usefulness of the offices. The only good thing to be said about Liberty Hall is that it might actually be on the list for demolition from next year.

Next comes the city council offices on Wood Quay, built to hide Sam Stephenson's bunkers in front of Christ Church. The trouble is that the new building is far worse than the original bunkers, which even if they were built in the wrong place, made a statement of some kind. The quay front block is just awful, with no redeeming features. The original argument against Sam Stephenson's buildings were that they obscured the view of Christchurch from across the river. The new offices totally obliterate any view that remained. Third has to be what is know as the Loop Line Bridge, across the Liffey and within vomiting distance of the aforementioned atrocity, Liberty Hall. Built to carry the railway line across the river in the 18th Century, it obscures the views of the city from both sides. Pity is that the opportunity to replace it 20 years ago was not availed of.

Dishonourable mentions go to the Department of Health Building, Hawkins House, to the ESB headquarters off Merrion Square, and there are dozens of others too many to mention. Just drive around any part of the country and compile your own list. The one excuse most of the above buildings have is that they were built in less enlightened times, surely we know better now.

Sadly not. The strip bungalows in counties Clare, Kerry and Galway, are likely to become icons to our bad taste and our "save money at all cost" attitude to design. The new disabled access bridges over the rail line on Dublin Bay will be a monument to the cult of the politically correct, all too visible, brainless and over the top.

Disabled people are embarrassed by them and most of the rest of us are afraid to speak out in case we are labelled as being uncaring. Disabled people have it bad enough getting around our country – just spend an afternoon with someone in a wheelchair in Dublin and you will find out very quickly how difficult life actually is – without being saddled with these monstrosities.

Fergal Keane is a reporter with RTÉ Radio's Five Seven Live