LATEST DUBLIN CITY NEWS

• “Proposed changes to retail guidelines will cost jobs, compromise main streets and cause more dereliction - An Taisce”

  03-01-2012

  Jobs will be lost and main streets will suffer if Forfas gets its way on Retail Planning  according to a recent An Taisce  Press Release

• Rejuvenating Dublin's Tourism Product

  23-12-2011

  Dublin City Business Association commissioned Jerome Casey and Felim O’Rourke to undertake a study of tourism in Dublin and to make least-cost recommendations for its rejuvenation. The World Tourism Organisation concluded (in relation to Ireland) that "there appears to be very little correlation between marketing spending by National Tourism Organisations and international arrivals". 
  

  Within Ireland, there is a mismatch between the Irish tourism market and the public resources devoted to it. 

  33 existing tourist attractions in Dublin were reviewed, and low-cost initiatives suggested for their improvement.

  From 2000 – 2010 Ireland’s share of world tourism visitors has fallen sharply. In 2004, Ireland changed from being a destination country for incoming tourists to an origin country for Irish, outgoing tourists.

  Dublin must move from passive approval of tourist activities to an active development of tourism as a priority industry in regenerating the city’s economy. 

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

  .

London Congestion Charge Set to Rise

Thursday the 20th of July 2006

Following a rise to £8 in July of last year, London Mayor Ken Livingstone has further angered motorists and business groups when he announced that the city's congestion fare would rise £10 a day by 2008. Critics accused him of using the scheme to raise money while Livingstone has said the revenue would be ploughed back into public transport. The charge was originally set at £5 when introduced in 2003. The boundary of the congestion-charging zone will also extend next year to include the affluent boroughs of Kensington and Chelsea. Since the introduction of the charge it has been claimed that traffic congestion has reduced in the areas covered initially by a third but it would appear that there is no reduction in the number of lorries and vans! Livingstone has also announced that bus fares will rise by 10 percent in 2007 - as part of a move to pay down the £3 billion government loan to the city's public transport. This confirms to many what critics have previously claimed, that the congestion charge would fund a new private sector/public sector bureaucracy and that public transport fares would be used to do it. Over 4,000 ratepayers in London have successfully won a rates revaluation in court against the local authority, because of the damage to retail turnover in the area. Don't be surprised if at the next election in the UK the Tories get in, that the congestion charge in London will be abolished.