WIT
H the wrecking of the Wallace Plaza at the hands of mindless vandals and a repair bill set to run into thousands of €uro, City Manager Eddie Breen, has conceded that if someone is determined to continue destroying the riverside amenity, they cannot be stopped. The seats, the backdrop wooden panels, lights and even the canvass canopy of the Plaza — constructed as one the country’s flagship millennium projects — were completely destroyed with graffiti on Friday night — just hours after the latest clean up was completed.
The wanton vandalism coincides with a move by some teenage skateboarders and BMX enthusiasts to abandon their purpose-built facility at the Regional Sports Complex at Kilbarry in favour of performing their stunts on the Plaza, which was built at a cost of £1.8m.
Poetry, swear words, drawings and specific names of two girls have been drawn and spraypainted on the entire facility, including the overhead canopy at least twenty feet above the ground.
As the extent of the damage unfolded over the weekend, Waterford City Council has been in touch with the canopy manufacturers to establish if the paint can be safely removed or if the canopy will have to be replaced completely.
“The damage was caused by a determined effort and through a planned operation,” City Manager Eddie Breen told members of the City Council on Monday night. He also stated that despite the best efforts of Council officials and the gardai, the facility could not be policed twenty-four hours a day and if someone was determined to do damage they could not be stopped.
With the schools now closed for Easter holidays, fears are growing that other prominent buildings will be targeted by the mindless vandals and their spray cans.
Cllr. Cha O’Neill believes that even the side wall of the Theatre Royal where skateboarders regularly congregate could also be defaced.
“Grafitti painting seems to be the craze at the moment and the entire city could be defaced in a matter of months,” he stated. Cllr. O’Neill went on to tell his Council colleagues that in the past two weeks he came upon two BMX enthusiasts practising their skills on the Plaza and when he spoke to then about it ,they said the facility at the RSC was unsuitable for their needs. “I was disgusted to see the latest damage and even if we put cameras around the Plaza, it will make no difference,” he went on to state.
The Council’s Director of Services, Paddy Power reminded the members that €100,000 had been spent providing the state-of-the art skateboarding facility and the design had been agreed with the users. For the duration of the Easter school holidays, it would be open every day between 10 a.m. and 8 p.m.
The reluctance to use the arena was evidenced again this week by Cllr. Sean Dower, who said that while on his way to the Council meeting he saw skateboarders at the Bishop’s Palace adjacent to the Theatre Royal. When asked to go to the skateboard park they refused.
