For four years, The Waterside has sat idle, and now the familiar chorus begins again: "Someone should get Conor McGregor to reopen it." As though the greatest crisis facing this community is the absence of overpriced pints and celebrity selfies.
Have we learned nothing? This is a man whom an Irish High Court jury found liable for raping Nikita Hand, awarding her substantial damages after hearing weeks of evidence. During that trial, the court heard harrowing medical evidence, including that Ms Hand required the surgical removal of a tampon lodged inside her body following the assault. The jury listened. They weighed the evidence. They reached their conclusion.
Yet somehow, for some people, the only lingering question is whether he'll pull a decent pint. That should shame us.
Communities are defined not by who has the deepest pockets, but by who we choose to welcome through the front door. Every invitation extended to McGregor sends another message to survivors of sexual violence: that wealth, celebrity and notoriety can outweigh accountability. That if you're famous enough, eventually people stop talking about what you've done and start talking about your business ventures instead.
We should be asking ourselves a different question. What message does it send to every woman in this town if the answer to an abandoned building is to roll out the red carpet for a man found liable for rape?
Across Ireland, women's refuges, rape crisis centres and frontline support organisations spend every day helping survivors rebuild lives shattered by violence. Their staff and volunteers carry burdens most of us cannot imagine. They believe victims when others do not. They offer shelter, counselling, legal support and dignity.
Those are the people deserving of our admiration.
Those are the people we should be backing.
Not a man whose public persona has become a grotesque monument to aggression, domination and the kind of performative masculinity that mistakes intimidation for strength.
Strength is not shouting louder than everyone else.
Strength is not throwing punches at an elderly man sitting on a bar stool.
Strength is not building an identity around fear, excess and the cult of the untouchable alpha male.
Real strength is found in the women who walk into a refuge with nothing but the clothes on their backs. It is found in survivors who tell their stories despite knowing they will be attacked, doubted and ridiculed. It is found in the workers who answer crisis calls at three o'clock in the morning because someone, somewhere, has nowhere else to turn.
That is courage.
The mythology surrounding McGregor has always depended on confusing violence with virtue. Too many have mistaken swagger for leadership, notoriety for achievement, and spectacle for substance. But communities should aspire to something better than celebrity worship.
An empty pub is an inconvenience.
A culture that excuses violence against women is a catastrophe.
If The Waterside is destined to stand empty for another four years, then so be it. Empty buildings can be restored. Broken trust is far harder to rebuild. A community that welcomes a man found liable by an Irish High Court jury for raping Nikita Hand tells every survivor that commerce matters more than conscience, that celebrity outweighs accountability, and that enough money can buy a second chance before justice has even had time to settle.
We should be better than that. Let The Waterside wait. Let someone with integrity breathe life back into its walls. Our community deserves more than another shrine to ego, and every woman who has ever feared, endured or survived violence deserves to know that when we are forced to choose between profit and principle, we will choose principle every single time.
⏩Pádraig Drummond is an anti-racism activist.
