Johnny Ronan and Dublin City Council may be engaged in a high level battle for the soul of the city but the enigmatic developer has certainly won the cultural prize this week.
It doesn’t come much more Dublin than James Joyce’s Ulysses and a new sculpture exhibition inspired by the novel is to open – not in one of the city’s galleries – but in offices owned by his Ronan Group Real Estate this Wednesday, which is Bloomsday.
Artist and sculptor Paul Harrison will present his latest, Joycean-themed exhibition, TELEMACHUS, at Connaught House in Ballsbridge, featuring 18 individual sculptures, reflecting the 18 episodes of the novel.
Each piece is a chapter specific, data generated work, based on the journey of the book’s protagonist, Leopold Bloom, as he crossed Dublin on June 16, 1904.
Joyce once declared that if Dublin “one day suddenly disappeared from the Earth, it could be reconstructed out of my book”. Indeed, the same could perhaps be said for Ronan’s own planning file, such is the number of buildings that he has built in the city – not to mention the buildings that he has not been allowed to build in an ongoing battle of wills with planning authorities.
The latest casualty was his 40-plus storey, 1,005 unit Waterfront South Central docklands scheme, from which there would have been a fine view of every Martello Tower on the Dublin coast.
Ronan himself would likely argue that Dublin’s planning guidelines are about as easy to successfully decipher as Joyce’s work.
Cork entrepreneur Ryan O’Neill, named on the Sunday Independent’s 30 under 30 list in 2019, will be lifting dumbbells with joy. His company Legitfit, which provides an online platform for gyms and personal trainers to build their businesses, is on the Techstars Sports Accelerator in the US.
The three-month programme began last week and is set to run through to September 2. The developers, including Legitfit, will showcase their businesses to a group of more than 500 investors.
Co-founder and CEO O’Neill said LegitFit had already raised $750,000 from Techstars and Enterprise Ireland. He hopes to grow funding to around $1m.
There’s yet more jostling for position in the pharmacy sector with the announcement by Pure Pharmacy that it is to launch a franchise operation, as well as two new shops in Swords and Drogheda. The first of a new network of franchise stores – to add to the portfolio of 20 stores it owns itself – is in Portlaoise.
The crowded pharmacy market is said to be on the brink of consolidation – but Pure claims to have a “disruptive” low-margin model to cut the cost of drugs.