Government Cancels Regeneration Of Dublin Flat Complexes

The Department of Housing has pulled funding for the regeneration of some of the poorest council flat complexes in the country - places like Pearse House and Oliver Bond will have to put up with massive overcrowding, mould, damp and deteriorating conditions.

100 complexes will suffer as a result of this cruel decision by a landlord government. The regeneration was also necessary to meet basic fire safety standards - so the government is saying that a whole section of the working class should just live in unsafe conditions?

Dublin City Council was criticised in 2017 by the European Committee of Social Rights over the rotten condition of some of its older flats complexes.

Neil Maloney, of the Pearse House Residents Association, said the community had been “completely sideswiped. After all this time we were hopeful it was going to happen. We’re all on top of each other. There’s damp and mould, sewage problems, we’ve been flooded from above, but it’s not just us, this is throughout the whole place.”

Conditions in Oliver Bond are as bad. “Our homes are destroyed with mould and damp, and we’re literally getting sick because of it,” said resident Natasha O’Keeffe.

“I have respiratory problems. I suffer with my breathing, and so does my daughter and my grandchild. The little one is only 20 months old so it’s harder to diagnose. But me and my daughter use inhalers and can’t be without steroids.”

83% of residents in Oliver Bond flats are living with mould and damp, 74% have draughts, poor insulation and cannot keep their home warm.

Dublin City Council has said it will go ahead with regeneration in cases where there is no reduction of housing numbers. But this means that small flats cannot be made bigger or the government is cutting off funding.

The neglect of the flats is no accident. I grew up in Fatima Mansions flats and saw first hand how the government and the council worked hand in hand to run down the council estates and drive people into private ownership.

They ghetto-ised the estates to demonise social housing - this propaganda assault on the idea of social housing came with cuts to caretakers and repairs. Government after government slashed the level of housing building.

It’s taken 40 years for them to get the flats into the state their in. The government doesn’t give a damn about us. Council tenants need to mobilise and kick up a fuss or nothing will ever change.

But in the long term we need to see that our mistreatment is part and parcel of a rotten market based system that intentionally ruined our communities to enrich a few developers and landlords.

We need to rise up and put working class people in the driving seat so that housing is democratically planned. We need James Connolly’s vision of a 32 county socialist republic.

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