Just a few lines update from my previous comment....
Visited the Barras again yesterday (20/9) and not only was the general services as abmissmal as before, but unfortunately for me, as I was not looking for counterfeit DVD's, there was even less of a reason for me being there.
Surprise, surprise the image of the Barras being the biggest source of counterfeit goods in Europe a few years ago......is now just as big as ever, almost every second stall had 'hundreds and hundreds' of pirate DVDs and the alternate stalls had bundles of fake tops and designer fake perfumes.....
Probably the 'trade' has increased again because of the 'police actions' at Paddy's that are the flavour of the month, however, Paddy's never in my lifetime has ever openly sold such volumes of goods as the Barras....so we have a dilema....
Are we to now believe that these 'criminal statistics' taken around Paddy's to support closure, could in fact contain figures from the Barras, (which is in the same Police catchment), certainly from what i saw, there seems to be a dearth of police activity at the Barras now, allowing the pirates to operate in big numbers....
Maybe the pirateers are buying property at the Barras, so that they can keep the riff-raff away from their doors, NIMBY..?