Bradley Bytes – A sort of political column by Dara Bradley

A decent sized crowd stormed the foyer of City Hall Monday, as part of a public protest calling on Galway City Council to ‘Save the Pálás’, the jinxed arthouse cinema at Merchant’s Road.

We can only assume the protestors, well-intentioned though they are, are unaware of or have forgotten the history of the ill-fated arthouse cinema project.

Now might be a good time to remind them – before they succeed in persuading anyone in power to pump more public money into what was always destined to be a white elephant.

This column has consistently highlighted the sometimes-unpopular opinion that Galway did not need an arthouse cinema, and that there were far more pressing cultural projects that should have taken precedence.

From the outset, an arthouse cinema was a vanity project. It was beset by unavoidable problems, but it was mismanaged too.

And that mismanagement cost the taxpayers in excess of €3m more than was budgeted for, on a project........

© Connacht Tribune