Since my twenty-something daughter made a career pivot into dress design a year or two ago, she’s been operating the occasional stall in Dublin’s flea markets. And when I tell friends or family about the location of her latest – Newmarket Square, also known as just “Newmarket”, in the Liberties – it presents a certain linguistic challenge.If I say she’s doing “a market in Newmarket”, that sounds like tautology. But depending on who I’m talking to, I may also have to say that this is a “a new market in Newmarket”: not to be confused with the old market they might remember there from about 10 years ago, which included the Dublin Food Co-op (now in Kilmainham).Then again, even that was new compared with its surroundings, because the history of markets in this area goes back to 1674 when the Earl of Meath applied for a charter to hold a weekly one, starting a tradition now immortalised in the placename.Three-and-a-half centuries later, the prospect of there ever being no market in Newmarket should be unthinkable.But that looks like being the reality again this coming winter at least. Because the latest incarnation of the flea market, a monthly outdoor one, is confined for practical purposes to summer.There’ll be one more this coming Sunday, and another in September, before the weather makes outdoor stalls unviable.At that point, ideally, traders would have an indoor space to retreat into. And there is exactly such a place nearby, newly built as part of the ongoing regeneration of the square, for a market of this kind.Alas, for various reasons, it has lain vacant for five years and remains for now beyond the reach of the actual market that since last year has been operating outside its doors.When The Eight Building, as the office block in question is known, was being developed, part of the planning permission was for a ground-level market hall of the sort with which the area has for so long been synonymous.The finished construction was then bought by a German property investment company, Patrizia, with assets worth €58 billion. And the annual rent the company is seeking for its ground floor space in The Eight Building is €66,000.Unfortunately, the flea market now in residence outside can’t pay that, or anything like it. As Ian Dowling, the antiques dealer behind the latest revival of street trading on the square puts it: “No community market could.”The owners argue that the asking price is already a heavy discount on what commercial retail value would be. But they have already applied for and been refused a change-of-use that would have allowed a convenience store on the site.The rent is instead pitched against typical local rates for warehousing or leisure. And Dowling accepts that €66,000 would be reasonable for such a use:“But the market hall wasn’t approved as just another commercial retail unit. It was approved as part of a wider community regeneration project intended to provide a permanent market and community space for the Liberties.”Nobody gets rich operating a flea market stall. For some of those involved in the Newmarket revival, like Celina Anderson, however, this is about more than money. It’s a small battle for the soul of Dublin.Descended from a long maternal line of Liberties traders, Anderson has also been leading the campaign to save the Iveagh Market. For her, such places are in the blood, but they’re also part of Dublin’s DNA.The irony is that Patrizia, while bringing welcome footfall into Newmarket, has also benefited from the area’s reputation. The company website boasts of being part of “Dublin’s coolest neighbourhood”, a status to which the local history of street trading is central.The blurb continues: “Nestled in an area teeming with food, drink, nightlife and culture, its digital and sustainable capabilities state the case for ticking the community spirit, resilience and sustainability ‘coolness reference points’.”Still, the company’s bottom line remains, and among those who think it’s too high is junior minister for Finance Robert Troy.As quoted by the Dublin Inquirer – a community newspaper which has covered this saga extensively – he told the Dáil earlier this year that the proposed rent was “excessive by any stretch of the imagination for someone to conduct a market”. Troy also suggested it was a deliberate strategy: “It is clear to me that what the developer is trying to do is to be able to go back to Dublin City Council and say there is no demand for a community market, but if you price something so high you will not get a demand.”When the area’s regeneration was being debated a decade ago, developers boasted the prospect of many future markets, for everything from fish to jewellery.The reality has been modest so far. And if the flea market fails, it will hardly encourage others. But the stall holders battle on for now, doing their modest part to ensure that the placename “Newmarket” does not become just another Dublin ghost sign, for something long extinct.