Mark your diaries! Pope Frank coming to Ireland - August 2018

smacl

People were much denser back then :pac:

realdanbreen

Great to see tens of thousands of people getting so much joy out of the weekends papal visit.

seamus

If it helps anyone count, based on the # of pens, it looks like the "small" pens are designed to hold 1,500 people. In the middle sections there are 16 small pens in every big one, and on the outside sections there are ten small pens in every "big" one.

Back of napkin calculations show about 330 small pens, ~ 500,000 people.

Sleeper12

seamus wrote:

Back of napkin calculations show about 330 small pens, ~ 500,000 people.

I think there were a few pencils there too though

recedite

realdanbreen wrote: »

Great to see tens of thousands of people getting so much joy out of the weekends papal visit.

Indeed, focus on the positive. The glass is 5% full

Cabaal

Deeply, deeply worrying that the pope is claiming no knowledge of mother and baby homes

https://www.broadsheet.ie/2018/08/27/i-hope-this-history-informs-your-response/

https://t.co/N3C3k6dLcn

Pope Francis meeting Philomena Lee and Steve Coogan following a Vatican screening of Philomena.

Could it be that Mother & Baby Homes just didn’t come up in conversation?

Seems very unlikely!

recedite

The structures of RCC have a certain amount of "plausible deniability" built into them.
Hence Pope Frank can express shock and dismay (possibly genuine) whenever he hears details about what "the Irish" got up to in the past.
If anyone is expecting him to issue some sort of apology for what they did - forget it.

Hotblack Desiato

You'd think that a head of state would be briefed on the questions they'd expect to be asked about before visiting a country.

Not that ignorance is any defence anyway.

Hotblack Desiato

We heard that 500,000 tickets were available, but how many did they actually issue?

Despite the people moaning about ticket protestors "denying" others the opportunity to attend, didn't they close the ticket availability window at the arranged time without issuing them all?

So how many did they actually issue? I'm pretty sure they never actually claimed to have issued the 500,000. We just assumed it, or they let us assume it (mental reservation)

Someone has the true figure and they're not telling!

I don't know why they aimed for the 500,000 figure in the first place, very ambitious. If a more realistic figure had been arranged for then the disruption to the city would not have been anything like as much.

Still, we had no problem getting into the city on Dublin Bus to go to the Parnell Square event, it seems that lots of people thought that buses wouldn't run (except to the Park) or that shops and restaurants in the city would be closed, they weren't.

Sleeper12

Hotblack Desiato wrote:

We heard that 500,000 tickets were available, but how many did they actually issue?

All 500,000 tickets were issued. Some got the tickets because it gave them free travel for the day. Many people applied several times thinking they had a better chance of getting tickets. Some ended up with 40 or 50 spare tickets. Plenty of these were available on Facebook pages right up to Saturday night. Others got tickets thinking that they might go if the mood takes them.

Gardai always give estimates for the numbers at an event. They gave less than 130,000 but later retracted this number & now say they will not be giving a number. OPW is also refusing to give a number. It looks like "someone" doesn't want to embarrass the church with low numbers. As it's both the Gardai and the OPW I can only assume that it's the government that asked them not to quote low numbers. In 1979 it was the Gardai & the OPW that gave the figures that are still quoted today. Its VERY strange that they won't quote this time

Sleeper12

Hotblack Desiato wrote:

Still, we had no problem getting into the city on Dublin Bus to go to the Parnell Square event, it seems that lots of people thought that buses wouldn't run (except to the Park) or that shops and restaurants in the city would be closed, they weren't.

The organisers said on the radio that only ticket holders would be allowed on public transport. I honestly didn't think anyone without a ticket could get on based on what they had said. Turns out this was wrong but like you say many thought that the transport was only for the park

NIMAN

Why would the Government want to help the church hide the embarrassing turnout?

Sure, no skin off their nose.

Sleeper12

NIMAN wrote:

Why would the Government want to help the church hide the embarrassing turnout?

I have no idea but who else can not only stop the Gardai and OPW from giving numbers but make the Gardai retract numbers already given?

volchitsa

The church didn't close down the city unnecessarily. That probably explains the reluctance to put out the figures now - arse covering.

Under His Eye

I wonder can the real figures be gotten via a FOI request?

Sleeper12

Under His Eye wrote: »

I wonder can the real figures be gotten via a FOI request?

I don't know.


I'm not sure it matters tbh. No one can claim 300,000 to 500,000 with a straight face after seeing the photos. It's so much of a Sean Spicer moment.


On the pat kenny show it was claimed that they used around 200,000 communion wafers. Assuming they counted them correctly this might be a reasonable way to get some numbers. It's not as low as 130,000 but it makes a mockery of 300,000 to 500,000. I would think almost everyone at the popes mass took communion

smacl

NIMAN wrote: »

Why would the Government want to help the church hide the embarrassing turnout?

Sure, no skin off their nose.

The state expended significant resources in hosting this event that came from public coffers. If we take it that the event was seriously under-subscribed, once again they have wasted our money rather than put it to good use. One wonders how many millions were spent and what the likes of the Simon community could have achieved with the same funds. So, yeah, to my mind it is an embarrassment.

Sleeper12

smacl wrote: »

The state expended significant resources in hosting this event that came from public coffers. If we take it that the event was seriously under-subscribed, once again they have wasted our money rather than put it to good use. One wonders how many millions were spent and what the likes of the Simon community could have achieved with the same funds. So, yeah, to my mind it is an embarrassment.

In fairness it's the people that are not RC who put RC on the census form. The census is used to plan Irelands future. They dip into the latest census form at times like this to get an idea on how many might attend an event.

Zubeneschamali

Sleeper12 wrote: »

They dip into the latest census form at times like this to get an idea on how many might attend an event.

The point being that they estimated the Park at 50% of JPII, and only got maybe 15-20%. They blew millions and disrupted the city for days costing millions more to businesses. Maybe the census figures fed into that, maybe not.

The big issue is that now they are hiding the official Garda/OPW estimates to cover the scale of the error they made and money they wasted.

We don't really need a FOI request, the original Garda estimate of 130,000 can be used unless and until someone releases the official Garda estimate.

Sleeper12

Zubeneschamali wrote:

The point being that they estimated the Park at 50% of JPII, and only got maybe 15-20%. They blew millions and disrupted the city for days costing millions more to businesses. Maybe the census figures fed into that, maybe not.

Population increases by 1.4 million since 1979. They actually got less than 5 percent at all of the events combined

Zubeneschamali

Sleeper12 wrote: »

Population increases by 1.4 million since 1979. They actually got less than 5 percent at all of the events combined

No, I mean JPII pulled a million people in the park. They planned for half that, but only got 15% of it.

robindch

From the "local angle!!!!" drawer comes this news item about somebody in Gloucester who realized that they kind of had their own papal visit as well:

https://www.gloucestershirelive.co.uk/news/cheltenham-news/pope-flew-over-gloucestershire-morning-1937279

Gloucestershire Live wrote:

The Pope flew over Gloucestershire this morning

Pope Francis may well have looked down upon Gloucestershire this morning as he flew directly above the county on his way to Ireland.

The Pontiff was due to land in Dublin at 10am for a first papal visit to the country since 1979 and his mass tomorrow will form the centrepiece of the World Meeting of Families - expected to draw a crowd on 500,000 people.

According to plane tracker website Flight Radar, the Pope's plane took a flightpath directly above Cheltenham's Montpellier Gardens, the King George V playing field in Rowanfield, and Hester's Way before heading out over the River Severn at Tirley and onwards.

His flight - AZ4000 - left Rome at 8.29am.

There will be a parade through Dublin city centre in the popemobile and he will visit the Capuchin Day Centre of Brother Kevin Crowley, which offers outreach services to the homeless of Dublin.

Pope Francis leaves Ireland tomorrow evening.

volchitsa

Sleeper12 wrote: »

In fairness it's the people that are not RC who put RC on the census form. The census is used to plan Irelands future. They dip into the latest census form at times like this to get an idea on how many might attend an event.

True, but there was also some controversy about how that census question appeared, remember. If that is why the numbers expected were so massively overestimated, then it's evidence that the accusation that the CSO wrote their census questions in a biased way, likely to inflate numbers artificially, and that is a serious issue for a government office that is supposed to be objective.

Does anyone at the CSO have anything to do with releasing these numbers? Or is it just someone covering for their mates?

NIMAN

smacl wrote: »

The state expended significant resources in hosting this event that came from public coffers. If we take it that the event was seriously under-subscribed, once again they have wasted our money rather than put it to good use. One wonders how many millions were spent and what the likes of the Simon community could have achieved with the same funds. So, yeah, to my mind it is an embarrassment.

I heard a figure of €30million spent on his visit.

And I don't think Simon would have solved any crisis with that money. It wouldn't even make a dent on all those claiming to be homeless.

lertsnim

NIMAN wrote: »

I heard a figure of €30million spent on his visit.

And I don't think Simon would have solved any crisis with that money. It wouldn't even make a dent on all those claiming to be homeless.

It could have sorted out a permanent cath lab for Waterford University Hospital several times over.

Sleeper12

NIMAN wrote:

And I don't think Simon would have solved any crisis with that money. It wouldn't even make a dent on all those claiming to be homeless.

We are back to 130 rough sleepers on the streets. 30 million wou go a long way helping those rough sleepers. There are still nights where we don't actually have enough beds in shelters if they all came in if the night

volchitsa

NIMAN wrote: »

I heard a figure of €30million spent on his visit.

And I don't think Simon would have solved any crisis with that money. It wouldn't even make a dent on all those claiming to be homeless.

Even if it's true that it wasn't "much money", most of the preparations for his visit were excessive, because people stayed away in droves, so it doesn't help that it wasn't "much" money.

But that clearly isn't true anyway, given the manpower needed just to do stuff like put up the barriers etc. Those employees are paid for the time that they didn't spend doing other work.

A lot of public money was thrown away unnecessarily, there are no two ways around that.

smacl

NIMAN wrote: »

I heard a figure of €30million spent on his visit.

And I don't think Simon would have solved any crisis with that money. It wouldn't even make a dent on all those claiming to be homeless.

Certainly wouldn't solve the problem, with close on 10 thousand homeless across the country, but could go a long way to solving the problem for rough sleepers for example (currently about 110 in Dublin). As for the bigger problem, the solution starts by the the powers that be getting the finger out and actually creating the housing stock. You also have to wonder about their collective competencies when the council reckon it will cost them €270k per unit to build a 3 bed apartment given the land for free, whereas architecht Dominic Stevens managed to build a cottage for €25k. Either way, your 30 million gets us somewhere between 111 to 1200 new homes and assuming average occupancy of 3 people 333 to 3600 fewer homeless. Not a solution, but one hell of a lot better use of limited and hard-won public resources than kowtowing to a foreign dignitary that is ultimately responsible for a massive amount of pain and suffering in this country over many decades.

Makes a mockery out of simple notions such as public money, public service, caring society and greater good.

robindch

smacl wrote: »

Makes a mockery out of simple notions such as public money, public service, caring society and greater good.

Having worked for several years in Simon, I'm going to have to suggest that pouring money into purchasing houses to resolve the problem of sleeping rough will not solve a problem caused, for the most part, by issues related to mental health, alcohol, drug and physical abuse, neglect, lack of education or a job, relationship problems, inability to look after oneself, and a range of other issues unrelated to the availability of safe, suitable, low-cost accommodation.

Sleeper12

robindch wrote: »

Having worked for several years in Simon, I'm going to have to suggest that pouring money into purchasing houses to resolve the problem of sleeping rough will not solve a problem caused, for the most part, by issues related to mental health, alcohol, drug and physical abuse, neglect, lack of education or a job, relationship problems, inability to look after oneself, and a range of other issues unrelated to the availability of safe, suitable, low-cost accommodation.

I'm not one of the people claiming that we don't have a homeless crises because we definitely do but you are 100 percent right. We had people sleeping rough in the middle of the boom. For the rough sleepers the important thing is to have services there when / if they do decide they want help.