It has been 10 years since Dublin City Council handed the world’s richest mouse a free pass to the Spire Into a Giant Lightsaber and didn’t even ask for lunch money.
It was December 2015. The Force Awakens was about to drop, and Disney, a company worth hundreds of billions, wanted to light up the Spire on O’Connell Street like a massive lightsaber to promote the film. A kind of galactic branding Christmas lights bonanza.
They got the green light. And they didn’t pay a thing.
Meanwhile, over in London, officials made a tidy €33,000 off the exact same stunt over Nelson’s Column on Trafalgar Square.. But Dublin just said: “Ah sure, go on.” They even helped organise it.
The whole thing cost Disney and Gala €35k to install. But instead of seeing any of that cash, Dublin just… watched. Local councillor Gary Gannon called the decision “ridiculous” and honestly, that’s being polite.
“It defies belief,” he told the Irish Independent at the time. He said, “I think the fact that we didn’t charge is ridiculous. People made money from using our city as a prop to promote a film, that’s not acceptable unless we as a city are benefiting from it. It defies belief that the council didn’t have the foresight to charge a fee.I can’t see the benefit that the city got, apart from being seen as a novelty. If they’re using our city to promote their film there should be some recompense for that. It creates a dangerous precedent. What other prop are we going to use to promote commercial brands,” Mr Gannon asked.
“Can anyone just walk in and use one of our monuments to promote a film because we don’t charge for this courtesy?”
Emails later released under Freedom of Information showed Disney pitching the idea as a way to “reinvigorate” O’Connell Street. As if Disney was only doing us a favour. As if what O’Connell Street really needed wasn’t social investment, but some Jedi aura points.
The Council’s response was at least contrite. “In hindsight, a fee could have been sought.” Deputy chief executive Brendan Kenny doubled down with: “It might have resulted in the project not happening at all.” Which is corporate speak for “we bottled it.”
You can’t blame Disney, really. If someone offers you a landmark for free, you take it. But a decade on, it’s still the kind of quintessentially Irish moment that sums up how Ireland treats its public spaces like they’re not worth anything unless someone outside tells us they are.
We let Disney turn the Spire Into a Giant Lightsaber for Star Wars, and all we got was the glow.
