Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 12 May 2026
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage
Dublin Inner City Flat Complex Regeneration: Discussion
2:00 am
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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I advise members of the constitutional requirement that they must be physically present within the confines of the Leinster House complex in order to participate in public meetings.
The regeneration of Dublin's inner-city flat complexes represents a series of interlinked challenges that require sustained State leadership. Many developments are no longer fit for purpose, with deep-rooted structural, safety and energy efficiency deficits that necessitate large-scale regeneration. Protecting residents while ensuring compliance with high standards of design, amenity and long-term management is essential to delivering lasting improvements that will benefit local communities.
Today I am pleased that the committee will have an opportunity to consider these and other related matters with representatives of the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Dublin City Council and the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, IHREC. I welcome from the Department Mr. Paul Benson, assistant secretary, Mr. David Dalton, principal officer, and Mr. Daniel Bliss, higher executive officer. I welcome from Dublin City Council Mr. Mick Mulhern, assistant chief executive, Mr. Martin Donlon, executive manager for housing, and Ms Collette Egan, senior executive officer. From IHREC I welcome Ms. Deirdre Malone, director, Dr. Iris Elliott, head of policy, and Ms. Fidelma Joyce, civil society engagement manager.
Before we begin I wish to explain some limitations to parliamentary privilege and the practice of the Houses regarding references witnesses may make to other persons in their evidence. The evidence of witnesses who are physically present or who give evidence from within the parliamentary precincts is protected, pursuant to both the constitution and statute, by absolute privilege. Witnesses are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that they should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity, by name or in any such way as to make him, her or it identifiable, or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity. If their statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity they will be directed to discontinue their remarks and it is imperative that they comply with any such direction.
The opening statements have been circulated to members. Is it agreed that they will be published on the committee's web page? Agreed. I will give the witnesses the opportunity to go through their statements for up to three minutes.
If a statement is longer than three minutes, I will have to curtail it. Therefore, I ask the witnesses to summarise their statements by outlining the main points.
Mr. Paul Benson:
I thank the Cathaoirleach and members for the invitation to address the committee today on inner-city flat complex regeneration in Dublin. I am joined by my departmental colleagues Mr. David Dalton and Mr. Daniel Bliss. I want to make it clear from the outset that it is a priority of the Department and the Government to ensure all homes within the social housing stock provide good-quality accommodation for local authority social housing residents. Notwithstanding that, it is clear from the findings of the European Committee of Social Rights, ECSR, arising from the International Federation of Human Rights, FIDH, collective complaint against Ireland in 2014, that this ambition is not always met. This is particularly the case with many of the older local authority flat complexes in our large urban centres, including those owned by Dublin City Council.
That is why the programme for Government, Securing Ireland's Future, commits to continuing and accelerating social housing regeneration schemes across Dublin city. It is also why our new housing plan, Delivering Homes, Building Communities, reaffirms that commitment. The Department of housing is supporting local authorities to transition from a largely response-based approach to the management and maintenance of the social housing stock to a planned maintenance approach informed by stock condition surveys. Furthermore, the ECSR finding is why the funding provided by the Department to local authorities for stock improvement works has increased by 65% since 2016. Almost €260 million will be provided this year for that purpose, which is a 32% increase on the €196 million available in 2025.
The management and maintenance of local authority-owned social homes is unambiguously the statutory responsibility of local authorities. Council officials and elected members are obliged to ensure adequate funding is provided for this purpose as part of their annual budget process. That said, the Department will continue to provide significant funding to supplement local authorities' own resources for that purpose. However, this is not, and can never be, a replacement for a local authority's own investment in the upkeep of its social homes.
The Department's commitment to regenerating flat complexes across Dublin city is demonstrated through the many successfully completed and ongoing regeneration projects undertaken by the city council. They include St. Teresa's Gardens, O'Devaney Gardens, Dominick Street, Dorset Street and many more. Those projects are, in effect, fully funded by the Exchequer. Since 2016, almost €1 billion in funding has been approved for regeneration projects by Dublin City Council. Some €120 million has been paid for projects delivered, €470 million is currently being drawn down by the council for projects under way and the remainder has been approved for projects yet to start. I assure the committee that this Department funding is, and will continue to be, available for regeneration projects submitted by Dublin City Council for funding approval. I am confident the funding amount is likely to increase as further projects are submitted.
I want to address recent reports regarding the regeneration of the Oliver Bond flat complex. Contrary to what has been widely reported, the Department of housing has not refused regeneration funding for Oliver Bond House. It certainly has not withdrawn any funding for the flat complex. Unequivocally, the funding, which amounts to more than €20 million, remains in place. At this stage, Dublin City Council has simply been asked to submit a revised proposal in line with the regeneration policy requirement that there should be no significant reduction in homes post-regeneration without adequate justification and, where homes must be lost, that those losses be minimised. The regeneration of Oliver Bond House is clearly a hugely important issue for its residents and the wider community. That is understood in the Department and by the Government. I recognise the contribution residents have made in recent years to developing regeneration proposals. I assure those residents that Oliver Bond House remains a priority regeneration project for the Department. I am confident that following further collaboration between the forum and Dublin City Council, and in turn with the Department, an agreed regeneration proposal will emerge that allows for an early delivery of phase 1 of the project.
I again thank the committee for the invitation to participate in this meeting. I look forward to our discussion.
Mr. Martin Donlon:
I thank the Chairperson and members of the committee for the opportunity to address them on the regeneration of Dublin's inner-city flat complexes. Dublin City Council manages approximately 29,000 homes, 11,000 of which are located within 212 multi-unit flat complexes across the city. Approximately 45% of those complexes are more than 50 years old, with the oldest being over 100 years old. A significant portion were built between the thirties and the seventies. As the buildings move through their natural life cycle, components fail, roofs leak and finishes deteriorate. Many of the older blocks were constructed to standards that pre-date modern space requirements and building regulations.
The council's approach to regeneration is grounded in a series of studies undertaken over the past 15 years. The 2011 citywide estate audit produced a comprehensive photographic and spatial inventory of all flat complexes and provided an initial priority grouping for renewal. The 2018 Estate Renewal Technical Report identified nine complexes for potential regeneration. Feasibility studies were carried out on each of those complexes and five were progressed based on viability. More recently, in 2022, further work, including an office-based assessment of the council's flats estate, was undertaken. This considered new climate targets, energy standards, building regulations and space requirements. It examined a consistent, standardised methodology based on age, condition, configuration, typology and site potential. The work was presented to a meeting of Dublin City Council's housing strategic policy committee, SPC, in 2023.
Between 2018 and 2022, 712 new homes were delivered across 12 estate regeneration projects. The programme currently in hand will deliver 3,728 new homes across 18 estate regeneration projects. Alongside this major capital regeneration programme, the council continues to implement a comprehensive planned maintenance, void refurbishment, precinct improvement and energy-efficiency works programme. In 2025, €57.5 million was spent on those works. This year, spending has increased to €78.5 million. To support our ongoing maintenance programmes, the city council is setting up a new asset management team.
In March 2026, an update was presented to the housing SPC outlining the background to work completed to date on determining assessment criteria for the prioritisation of estate regeneration. In the context of recent funding and delivery challenges, including construction cost inflation, value for money requirements, ensuring no significant loss of units and, where there are necessary losses, that they be minimised and justified, and planning an achievable tenant decanting strategy, we are working with our housing SPC to refine prioritisation around four key factors. They are: building type, considering whether it is a protected structure or building of historic interest, in which case it presents challenges; building condition, with ongoing adjust surveys across 30,000 units at present; additionality and future tenure mix, identifying opportunities for infill and new build development in compliance with the Department's design manual types; and value for money.
Where sites offer significant potential for additionality or where original layouts are fundamentally inadequate, demolition and new build will be considered. Elsewhere, a renewal and retrofit approach will be the preferred and supported solution for existing complexes. The future programme anticipates delivery of 660 additional new homes by 2032 across six estates, with a focus on additionality, standardisation, viability and sustainable regeneration of both buildings and communities in line with the council's city development plan.
Ms Deirdre Malone:
I thank the Chairperson and members for the invitation to today's meeting. IHREC welcomes the committee's focus on the regeneration of Dublin's inner city flat complexes and the opportunity to situate this crucial topic within the wider context of the human right to housing. While the focus of this session is on inner city Dublin, the issues of substandard conditions, delayed regeneration and barriers to redress are not confined to one area of Ireland. Rather, they reflect systemic issues in the provision of social housing right across the State.
If there is one point the committee takes from today's meeting, I urge that it be an understanding of the right to adequate housing as a gateway right. By this I mean it is a right, when respected, that unlocks and opens up access to other rights, and which, when it is breached, compounds rights violations and human suffering. Deficient housing conditions impact on the right to life, health, family, private life and the right to human dignity itself. In the current context in Ireland, the housing crisis is a key driver of growing socio-economic inequality. There is increasing economic security for those who own housing while those who do not are driven into greater debt and poverty.
The right to adequate housing is firmly grounded in international human rights law, including the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the European Social Charter. IHREC's joint research with the Economic and Social Research Institute identified six key dimensions of that right, namely, access, affordability, security of tenure, cultural adequacy, housing quality and location. We propose that those six dimensions can provide a practical framework for the committee to assess whether housing meets the standard required for a life lived with dignity. Evidence, much of it gathered and published by the very communities affected, shows that many residents continue to endure conditions that fall far short across several of those six dimensions. Living like this has demonstrable impacts on physical and mental health, including higher rates of respiratory illness and stress than for those living in a decent home. Delays in addressing repairs and progressing regeneration are not acceptable. These conditions are being experienced by tenants whose landlord is the State itself.
The committee will hear later from the Community Action Network about the International Federation for Human Rights v. Ireland case.
I will confine myself to the following point: despite repeated reporting cycles subsequent to that case, and assessments provided by IHREC and affected communities, almost a decade later, we are still in a situation whereby Ireland has failed to action this decision in full. In legal terms, persistent violations raise serious concerns regarding access to justice and the effectiveness of remedies available. In human terms, it must be impossible for those communities to believe that justice is truly accessible in this State.
Delays perpetuate and deepen existing rights violations. While we are aware that policy commitments exist, including that set out by previous speakers, there is a chasm between stated ambition and actual delivery. The absence of clear timelines, comprehensive data on housing conditions and a lack of consistent progress speaks more loudly than paper commitments. The failure to regenerate complexes hits the most vulnerable hardest. These residents are already dealing with immense challenges and subjecting them to substandard conditions is a clear example of inaction on inequality. This is a fundamental rights issue, not simply a housing one.
From an access to justice perspective, Ireland has not yet incorporated a stand-alone constitutional right to housing, as has been recommended by IHREC in the past. Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, ECHR, safeguards the right to private and family life, which can be engaged in cases of inadequate housing. Similarly, the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights affirms dignity and respect for private and family life. However, that means little when many social housing tenants lack effective, enforceable mechanisms to vindicate those rights in practice. The commission’s position is that addressing these issues requires a rights-based approach, including the relevant public bodies having due regard to an existing duty, that is, the public sector equality and human rights obligation. This includes regeneration of existing social housing stock as well as significantly increasing the supply of social and affordable housing. Policy in this area must have regard to the public sector duty, PSD, by ensuring that the voice and needs of the communities affected are at the centre of policy and funding decisions. It also requires strengthening access to effective remedies so that individuals and communities can hold the State accountable where appropriate standards are not met.
The regeneration of Dublin's inner city flat complexes presents the State with an opportunity to make human rights real and to give meaningful effect to the right to adequate housing. Delivering on this right is essential to protecting dignity, health and equality for all residents and to ensure that we all have the opportunity to live in conditions that respect the dignity and the humanity of everyone.
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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I thank the witnesses. We will now go to members, who will have seven minutes for questions and answers.
Catherine Ardagh (Dublin South Central, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the witnesses for coming in. I will raise a few issues about the Oliver Bond regeneration as it is in my constituency. It is an important regeneration project and has been important for more than two decades. My first question is for the Department. Does the Department accept that regeneration projects, such as the project at Oliver Bond, cannot be judged solely on a cost-per-unit basis, given the historic levels of deprivation and disadvantage in the area? Linking in with that question, is the Department satisfied that the current no net loss of units policy gives the flexibility to properly modernise older complexes, such as this Herbert Simms-designed complex built in the 1930s? I ask the witnesses to be brief because I only have seven minutes.
Catherine Ardagh (Dublin South Central, Fianna Fail)
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That seems to be what we are getting by way of feedback from the Department.
Catherine Ardagh (Dublin South Central, Fianna Fail)
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A reduction in the amount of units seems to be one of the reasons why the Department is not happy to allocate funding in the current format.
Mr. Paul Benson:
The question was about no net loss. That is not the Department's position. The Department's position is that there should not be a significant loss of homes. If there has to be a loss of homes for design reasons, standards reasons or compliance reasons, those losses should be minimised and justified. It is not the case that the Department does not support the loss of homes where it is absolutely essential. We have approved projects that have been completed by Dublin City Council where there have been loss of homes. I just want to correct that. It is not the position or policy and never has been.
Catherine Ardagh (Dublin South Central, Fianna Fail)
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Okay, and-----
Mr. Paul Benson:
Value for money cannot be ignored but we take a very flexible approach to regeneration projects and many other things. We generally operate within delegated sanctions but we always make it clear to local authorities bringing projects forward that if they are in breach of delegated sanction, whether it is in terms of acquisitions or new builds and the cost guidelines we have for new builds, they should come in and discuss it with us and justify the extra costs. If those justifications can be supported, we will support the projects. That is the postilion.
Catherine Ardagh (Dublin South Central, Fianna Fail)
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It is clear to everyone that the cost per unit is relatively high, but given the history of lack of investment and underinvestment over decades in the Oliver Bond complex, the money spent per unit is not just going into a home but is going into regenerating a whole community. Does the Department accept that it cannot just look at the cost per unit?
Mr. Paul Benson:
Of course the Department accepts that. It is why we are funding a regeneration officer who is working in Oliver Bond and has been for the past four years. We will continue to fund the regeneration officer. It is why we are funding significant improvement works valued at over €2.5 million in Oliver Bond. It is why we are funding a community centre valued at over €1.5 million.
Catherine Ardagh (Dublin South Central, Fianna Fail)
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At the moment, we are talking about the current regeneration project that is on the table.
Catherine Ardagh (Dublin South Central, Fianna Fail)
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We are talking about the €22 million that the Department has said it is not happy to pursue in the current format. Is that not correct to say?
Catherine Ardagh (Dublin South Central, Fianna Fail)
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I received a letter stating that at the moment, the Department will not be going ahead in the current format. I think we are all on the same page in that regard. It has been well-documented.
Catherine Ardagh (Dublin South Central, Fianna Fail)
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Would Mr. Benson like to clarify that?
Mr. Paul Benson:
I do not know who the letter was from. The Department has made its position clear. This project is in the system. We support it and have allocated funding for it. That funding remains. Nothing has been refused. Dublin City Council is being asked to reconsider its proposal and the way it proposes to approach the project, but nothing has been refused.
Catherine Ardagh (Dublin South Central, Fianna Fail)
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If the current proposal is not being accepted-----
Catherine Ardagh (Dublin South Central, Fianna Fail)
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What is it?
Catherine Ardagh (Dublin South Central, Fianna Fail)
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Would Mr. Benson say that in 2023, when the Department was involved in preliminary designs, it was accepted that this was how we were proceeding?
Mr. Paul Benson:
The submission at stage 1 was for 58 units. What came in a few months ago was for 46 units, which is a further reduction that means 38% of the homes have been lost. We are not satisfied that the further reduction has been justified. Our door is open and we are happy to talk to Dublin City Council. Meetings will be happening next week and I remain confident that an agreed proposal will be brought forward.
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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I wonder should Dublin City Council come in and make a comment at this stage.
Catherine Ardagh (Dublin South Central, Fianna Fail)
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I have a few questions for Dublin City Council.
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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All right, fair enough.
Catherine Ardagh (Dublin South Central, Fianna Fail)
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Mr. Benson and I will agree to disagree. Can Dublin City Council accept that the existing units as they are, and the matrix of them, are no longer suitable for modern families? We can agree to that. Hence the need for the regeneration project.
Catherine Ardagh (Dublin South Central, Fianna Fail)
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I will move to the amalgamation of units and overcrowding. When we look at building standards generally across the country, we all understand that apartments now need to have bathrooms of a certain size and thresholds of a certain size to accommodate people with disabilities. That is a standard across the board for any new large retrofit or new build. To do this work, units have to be reduced in size. Obviously, reducing them in size will mean fewer units and, as we have seen, an increase in cost. I cannot understand how that has not been taken into consideration by the Department. I have been in Oliver Bond. I have been in many of these units and they are small and cramped. The walls are green, not because the wallpaper is green but because of the serious mould and mildew on the walls. This regeneration project is urgent. It is clear to anyone that amalgamating the property is a smart and easy thing to do. I know that was the proposal on the table. I cannot understand why it is now being taken off the table. Perhaps the Department officials could give me their view on that point.
Mr. Paul Benson:
The most recently published housing waiting list for Dublin City Council had just over 12,600 people on it. Almost 10,000 of those are single adults. Just less than 1,000 are couples.
The requirement for housing is studios and one-bed apartments. We look forward in terms of what we want the social housing stock to look like-----
Catherine Ardagh (Dublin South Central, Fianna Fail)
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Not in the Oliver Bond complex, though.
Catherine Ardagh (Dublin South Central, Fianna Fail)
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The Oliver Bond complex is a community. It is not for single transient individuals.
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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Deputy, please let our witness finish.
Mr. Paul Benson:
We want the social housing stock to work, and not just for current residents. It has to work for the current residents, but it also has to work for potential future residents and potential future needs. We are quite satisfied that the protection of the units there, and their sizes and the use of studios, one-bed units and two-bed units - whatever that might end up being - is the right thing to do in the long term strategically. The residents who are there and overcrowded need to be accommodated, and we are satisfied that there are sufficient proposals from Dublin City Council to provide purpose-built new accommodation for those residents within the Oliver Bond complex, as is proposed in the master plan. There is no need to lose units to accommodate the existing residents. We can do both. That is the view of the Department. The funding is there to do both-----
Catherine Ardagh (Dublin South Central, Fianna Fail)
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Well, I would say-----
Mr. Paul Benson:
-----and the opportunity is there to do both. We think it is shortsighted not to look at that possibility and opportunity. The future upcoming meetings will flesh all that out. I reiterate that I am satisfied and very confident that we will come to an agreed proposal on this project.
Catherine Ardagh (Dublin South Central, Fianna Fail)
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I think single studios and one-bed apartments will cause fragmentation of an already hard-pressed community. I just do not think that the smaller units work. I understand what Mr. Benson is saying in respect of the housing list and the huge need for studios and one-bedroom apartments, but when it comes to the Oliver Bond complex, this is not about something to take off the housing numbers. It is about regenerating a community, and this community requires larger flats and units with at least two bedrooms. A lot of families are living in these communities. A studio apartment just does not cut it, and I do not think that is where we should be heading.
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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Would Mr. Mulhern like to comment on behalf of Dublin City Council?
Mr. Mick Mulhern:
I can do, yes. As has been pointed out, there is a need to address the challenges in the Oliver Bond complex. We cannot lose sight of the fact that there are proposals on the table which we have submitted to the Department and that it has looked at. I think we all support large elements of the overall strategy that we have gone down to the Department with. This includes new developments on Bridgefoot Street. When we went down to the Department originally, that had 38 homes in it; it has now increased to 42 homes. That is a positive and the Department is very supportive of that scheme. There are plans in there to demolish three blocks, R, S and T, which sit on the river's edge, and to increase the number of units there from 78 to 108. Again, these are early conversations, but they are design manual compliant and the Department is very supportive of it, and we will work that through the process. That is a really positive element.
For context, there are 16 blocks in the Oliver Bond complex now. We are proposing the demolition of three blocks, R, S and T, and having a new build there. I will come to three other blocks, L, M and N, in a moment. There are then ten blocks in the middle, where we had absolutely listened to the Department’s view on the point about there being no significant loss of homes. The approach we were taking for those ten blocks is just that - to refurbish and go in to deal with the mould, the windows and the insulation. Again, I think the Department is supportive of this. It is at a slightly earlier stage, but the Department is also supportive of that approach.
What it really boils down to, though, is that there are three blocks, L, M and N, over a whole significant master plan, where the Department has set out its position to us. We have taken it on board and we will move forward and find a solution for L, M and N. We have already agreed to meet the Minister shortly. We have already met the regeneration forum and set that out, and we will be meeting again to consider those options, with that community input, so we can go back and get everybody on the same page. We are confident, therefore, that while it is a setback, we can find a solution to the Oliver Bond complex process.
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the witnesses for their opening statements. I also want to focus on the Oliver Bond complex, in part because of the significance of the scheme, but also because what happens in that complex is going to have huge implications for almost all the other upcoming inner-city flat complex regenerations.
Starting with Mr. Benson, he said in his opening statement that the Department of housing has not refused regeneration funding for Oliver Bond House. That is not factually correct. On 11 December, Dublin City Council submitted a funding submission for the deep retrofit and amalgamation of blocks L, M and N. Detailed drawings were produced, and this was as a result of extensive consultation with residents over a number of years. On 27 April, a letter from one of the officials in Mr. Benson's section of the Department was sent back to the council and made it very clear, for the reasons Mr. Benson outlined, that the funding request was not supported. The funding request for the specific proposal to take the 74 units and deep retrofit and amalgamate them down to 46 has been refused. I do not believe it is factually correct to suggest anything otherwise to this committee.
My real concern, however, is that if we go back to that letter from the Department and the guidance it gives to the local authority for the Department's alternative proposal, and if Dublin City Council follows it, then fewer people will be living in those homes than either is the case today or would be the case under the Dublin City Council proposal.
I have some very specific questions and I am going to press Mr. Benson for very specific questions. In the Department's assessment of the Dublin City Council proposal submitted in December 2025, was a bed space analysis done of the consequences of the council’s proposal versus that of the Department? I ask this because the issue is not the number of units but the number of people who will live in those units. Has the Department done an analysis of the bed space impact of the Dublin City Council proposal compared with the Department's own proposal, and can that analysis be shared with us?
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Can it be shared with us?
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Dublin City Council has not shared anything with me, but I can count and I have done my own analysis. Okay, let us test this proposition, and I ask Mr. Benson to correct me if I am on the wrong path. Dublin City Council is proposing to take 74 units and reduce the number to 46 units, with a bed space occupancy of 144 beds. Is that correct?
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Okay. The Department, then, is proposing to keep 68 units, but with a lower bed space occupancy of 114. Is that figure of approximately 114 to 116 roughly in the ballpark?
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Dublin City Council is talking about reducing the number of people living there by 26%. The Department is proposing reducing the number of people living there by 41%. Is that the Department’s position, yes or no?
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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That is not my question. I am going to try to not be rude. Is it the case that-----
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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Nobody is going to be rude to any witness here. I just want to be very clear about this.
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Yes, but this is very important.
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Is it the position that the Department is proposing to reduce the bed space in blocks L, M and N by approximately 41%?
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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According to the guidance in the Department’s letter, however, is that the rough ballpark figure?
Mr. Paul Benson:
No, the Deputy cannot assume that, because what he is doing is taking what is a maximum bed space, based on the Dublin City Council proposal, and assuming that every house will be fully occupied per that bed space. We know from examining the social housing stock, though, that three-bed houses are, too often, under-occupied-----
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Not in the Oliver Bond complex.
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Okay-----
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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No-----
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Yes, but I will not allow Mr. Benson to talk down the clock by talking about something else.
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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I will add on the time. I ask the Deputy to let Mr. Benson finish answering and I will add on the time afterwards.
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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My question is very specific. Dublin City Council has set out a proposal. The Department has set out an alternative guidance, which it wants the council to consider and respond to. Does Mr. Benson accept that the bed space loss will be similar or greater under the Department’s proposals than under the current Dublin City Council proposal, yes or no?
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Just the three blocks. That is what we are dealing with.
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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I am asking about the three blocks.
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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I am sorry-----
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Only one funding submission has been made to the Department to date. It concerns L, M and N.
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Will Mr. Benson answer the question clearly? Is it the position that the Department's guidance in the letter from April would result in a greater loss of bed spaces in those three blocks than in the Dublin City Council proposal, yes or no?
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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The second question concerns the fact that one of the consequences of that proposal to reduce occupancy, as per the Department's proposal, is that there will be a heavy concentration of studios and one-bedroom units for two-person households. The make-up will be 30% studios and 40% one-bed units for two persons. There will be no space for families with children, as per the Dublin City Council proposal.
As someone who was formerly involved in estate management in Mayo, does Mr. Benson think that having such a heavy concentration of studios and one-bedroom units is a good approach to estate management? Would he recommend it as a general approach to estate management? I am in favour of more studios and one-bedroom units for the reasons Mr. Benson has given, but is concentrating them all in one place good estate management?
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Mr. Benson is going to pursue a similar approach for the remainder of the estate as what has been done with Pearse House up to the present.
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Okay, will Mr. Benson correct me?
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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We do not know what the tenure will be elsewhere. There is no proposal on the table.
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Here is the problem.
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Here is-----
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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These are the first-----
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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First of all-----
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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No, in fact, as a consequence of the Department's proposal, even fewer people will be living there. Mr. Benson is aware that Dublin City Council's proposal included phase 1A, which would be 43 apartments, a net gain of 15 units. What I am trying to convey to Mr. Benson and committee members is that under the Department's proposal on the table at the moment for phases 1 and 1A, fewer people would be living in that accommodation than under the council's proposal. The thing that makes no sense when I look at the Department's letter and the reason it refused to support the funding submission is that it cannot support such a large reduction of homes in a housing crisis. In fact, under the Department's proposal, even more people would be left without homes if this is implemented. Does Mr. Benson not see the absurdity of that?
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Hang on a second. They will be smaller homes with fewer people living in them so the total number of people living in that location under the Department's proposal is the lowest of all the proposals on the table. Mr. Benson has accepted before the committee that that is the case.
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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We do not dispute that.
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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I have a few follow-up questions. Did the Minister have sight of this letter or was he aware of the position of the Department when this was communicated to Dublin City Council in April?
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Had he been briefed on this?
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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On this specific - I call it a refusal, Mr. Benson calls it something more Orwellian - decision not to proceed with the funding request outlined in the letter.
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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It is interesting because, before I came to the committee meeting, I raised the matter with the Taoiseach and he made it clear that the Minister was not standing over this particular proposal.
To be clear - and some of these numbers might perplex other people-----
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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I am trying to get clear about it myself.
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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-----but the Deputies who know Dublin city better than I do understand what is at stake here. Deputy Ó Snodaigh, I and a number of other Deputies visited the flat complex again at the weekend. These are some of the smallest apartments that can be imagined. They have some of the worst damp, mould and rat infestations. What Dublin City Council has brought to the table, following detailed negotiation with residents, is a credible plan. Yes, it will involve a reduction in units, but that will be offset by a new apartment block across the street and it means the residents who live in the Oliver Bond complex today will get to remain in that community. What I find remarkable is that the Department is proposing an alternative that will see substantially fewer people live in the same location.
The bed-space loss for blocks L, M and N under the council's proposal is 26%. It would mean there would be 26% fewer beds than there are currently. The loss under the Department's proposal is in the region of 40%, which is twice the loss. Mr. Benson is right that there should be more studios and one-bedroom units, but that should not be done by displacing a community of people, who want to remain where they are and to have proper homes that meet modern standards, to I do not know where because they will not all go into the 43 units at the bottom of Bridgefoot Street.
The Department took a similar position on Pearse House. A similar refusal letter, as I call it, was sent to the council in April last year. It was only in March this year that the revised proposal was given the nod to proceed. Are we likely to see a similar 12-month delay in this project? Does Mr. Benson accept that the Department's decision of 27 April will significantly delay any meaningful regeneration for the people of the Oliver Bond complex who are today living in substandard conditions? Does Mr. Benson accept that the consequence of this letter is significant delay?
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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I will give Mr. Benson 30 seconds to answer.
Mr. Paul Benson:
No, I do not accept that there has to be a considerable delay. I cannot speak for Dublin City Council as to why a revised submission for Pearse House took so long. I presume there was consultation with residents and everyone else, and that takes time, but I think this can be resolved fairly quickly. As I said, the funding is still in place. The approvals are still in place for regeneration of the Oliver Bond complex. It is not the Department's intention to force any of the residents currently in the Oliver Bond complex out of it.
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Just-----
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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I am sorry, but to be very clear-----
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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We are over time now. Hold on please, Deputy.
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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If 74 homes are taken and almost all of them are turned into one-person studios and two-person one-bedroom apartments, where will the families with a three-person, four-person and five-person need go? The Dublin City Council proposal deals with that.
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Under the Department's proposal, it will be more than 28.
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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I call Deputy Cooney.
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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It will. There is a net increase of 15 units under the Dublin City Council proposal.
Aubrey McCarthy (Independent)
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The Deputy is mixing up households and bed spaces.
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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I understand the difference. I do not think the Department does-----
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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I call Deputy Joe Cooney
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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-----and I am sure the Minister does not.
Joe Cooney (Clare, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Cathaoirleach. I thank the witnesses for coming and for their opening statements. Dublin inner city flat complex regeneration looks after approximately 29,000 homes. Around 45% of them are now more than 50 years old, with the oldest more than 100 years old. What type of condition are they in at the moment?
Mr. Mick Mulhern:
A significant number of them are in quite bad condition. At the moment we are doing condition surveys on those 30,000 homes. The target is to try to do the 30,000 condition surveys by the end of 2030 - that is about 4,000 or 5,000 per year - to tell us the exact state of all those homes. However, we know a number are in quite bad condition and in response to that, this year, we have increased our budget for planned maintenance, which deals with new windows and doors and energy efficiency. We increased our budget from €57 million last year to €78 million this year and it will increase again to €83 million in 2027. We have upped the amount of money we spend on maintaining, improving and dealing with planned maintenance of those properties.
Joe Cooney (Clare, Fine Gael)
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Are all these units occupied?
Mr. Mick Mulhern:
We have a 2.6% vacancy rate, of which 1% has been set aside for estate regeneration, where we knock down apartment blocks and rebuild. About 1% of the 2.6% is earmarked for demolition and 1.6% is the vacancy rate, which is a steady churn of people. About 70% of that churn is people leaving social accommodation or passing away. When we get properties back we refurbish them and put them back into use. That takes approximately 21 to 22 weeks to do.
Joe Cooney (Clare, Fine Gael)
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When does the Department hope the demolition will take place?
Mr. Mick Mulhern:
We have regeneration plans under way for 23 flat complexes across the city and they are at different stages. Some are on site, like O'Devaney Gardens and St. Teresa's Gardens, and some are at early planning stages, like Matt Talbot Court and Dominick Street west. There are 23 flat complexes where we are actively doing early planning works all the way through to on-site works.
Joe Cooney (Clare, Fine Gael)
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Is funding in place for them?
Mr. Mick Mulhern:
We go through different stages of funding approval. About 18 of the 23 flat complexes already have some level of funding approval in place and we have not yet gone to the Department for approval for about five. However, in the schemes we are bringing forward where there is large-scale demolition and regeneration, the Department is always very supportive. It is just in some of the complex inner city schemes that managing them can be a bit more challenging.
Joe Cooney (Clare, Fine Gael)
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In its opening statement, the Department said that since 2016 almost €1 billion has been approved for regeneration projects. I am aware of what has been spent but €325 million has been approved for projects yet to start. Will someone explain what those projects are and why they have not started? What is the blockage?
Mr. Mick Mulhern:
There is no blockage. It is just that, in a flat complex in the city where we have existing tenants, it can take a number of years to engage with tenants. We go the Department for an initial approval in principle for a redevelopment. Then we engage with tenants. We have to move tenants out. We have to get planning permission and appoint contractors and then they have to go through a build, so some of those schemes can take seven, eight or nine years from initial approval for a regeneration scheme to actually starting and Dublin City Council moving those schemes through the process. The Deputy must remember we are dealing with estates where people live. They are their houses so we have to take time to figure out the right solution and move people out where we can. There is no delay because of the Department. There is a lot of work involved for us to get planning permission, move people out, get contractors appointed and get on site.
Joe Cooney (Clare, Fine Gael)
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I am well aware of all the stages the council has to go through. Could it be speeded up? Will it take a lot of time to get all these projects delivered with all the work involved that Mr. Mulhern mentioned in going through the stages? What kind of time are we talking about?
Mr. Mick Mulhern:
For broader context, on Dublin City Council land at the moment, more than 100 different housing capital projects are under way for the delivery of just over 12,000 homes. Our pipeline for delivery is those 12,000 homes over the next seven to eight years across 100 different projects by us or where we have partnered with the LDA or AHBs on our land. That is the overall timeline. If the Deputy wants to talk about a specific project or site, I am happy to give him the details.
Joe Cooney (Clare, Fine Gael)
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I see that €470 million is currently being drawn down for projects that are under way. I presume they will be completed some time in the near future, will they?
Mr. Mick Mulhern:
Yes, for example, we are in O'Devaney Gardens at the moment. That has 1,041 homes, all of which are public housing with social and affordable homes. Likewise, we are on site in St. Teresa's Gardens, or Donore as it is now called, and in Oscar Traynor Road. There are multiple sites for which the Department is providing funding, which we are moving through at pace. People are moving into O'Devaney Gardens or Montpelier now. I think a few hundred people are living there at the moment and the other big one is St. Teresa's Gardens, where the first stages are due for completion early next year.
Joe Cooney (Clare, Fine Gael)
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That is welcome and positive news. Going back to the Department's opening statement, what are the major obstacles that are holding up the Oliver Bond flat complex? What is the background?
Mr. Mick Mulhern:
This scheme has been around for the past five years and Dublin City Council has been working to try to find a solution for this scheme. It is challenging when we are dealing with a live community with a lot of social issues in the area. We are trying to find an agreement. Ms Egan, Mr. Donlon and our team have spent a lot of time on it and the Department has funded a community worker there to talk to all the people to try to find out exactly what is going on on the ground. We got initial approval two years ago and in the past two years we have been working up the scheme. As we work up a scheme, we get more detail and understand its complexities.
The Department is right that we had to remove 12 units from that scheme originally. We have now found an alternative site to provide 43 units, but it is not actually in the Oliver Bond complex; it is immediately beside it. The challenges are dealing with a live community, dealing with a very old apartment block that needs a lot of work, securing value for money with an approach that delivers with no significant loss of homes and, as Deputy Ó Broin said, ensuring we get the right people living there. As I said, overall a good strategy is in place for the Oliver Bond complex. There is an initial challenge around blocks L, M and N, which are three blocks of 16. We will work closely with the Department and the community as quickly as we can. We have committed to go back to them in about six weeks with reconsidered options. At that point, we will talk to the community and to the Department.
Joe Cooney (Clare, Fine Gael)
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I presume it is holding up progress in the development. When does Dublin City Council hope to get it sorted out and over the line?
Mr. Mick Mulhern:
As I said, we are looking at some options again in light of the Department's guidance and we will be back to the community in about six weeks. However, I cannot give the Deputy a firm timeline because we will have to see which option we move forward with which is acceptable to all parties before we have a firm option. If we do bigger scale demolition, it will take longer than refurbishing existing homes. The two of those options have quite different timelines, so until we settle on the right option, it is hard to give an exact timeline.
Joe Cooney (Clare, Fine Gael)
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I can see that Dublin City Council is doing its utmost to move it forward, but we are all well aware of the housing crisis so I hope progress will happen sooner than later.
Aubrey McCarthy (Independent)
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I have been running in and out to other committees so I apologise for that. Reading the three statements, there seems to be general agreement that regeneration is necessary. The the council says its delivery is constrained by viability, inflation, decanting and which locations to prioritise. The Department says regeneration is a priority and funding is available, but IHREC says the delays are unacceptable and the human rights concerns persist.
Dublin City Council has been looking at studies and assessments going back many years, yet there are still serious concerns about conditions and delays in a significant number of complexes, which have been brought up in these Houses many times. What is causing the delay? I am involved in an organisation beside Pearse House so I know it has been raised many times, as has the Oliver Bond complex. I am aware of the complexes. If Dublin City Council has to pin it down, what is the key delay?
Mr. Mick Mulhern:
As I said at the start, we are working on more than 100 different capital projects, and on estate regeneration in particular, we are currently live on 23 projects across the city with potential for 4,800 homes. The vast majority of those are moving ahead well. We have planning permission or we are moving through the planning process. On a large number of those projects, we are on site. In our view, where we have the capacity and are moving forward on a scheme, the vast majority of the 23 regeneration projects are moving well. We run into normal project challenges with utilities, securing the necessary business case or getting planning permission. The normal challenges that arise on a capital project are live in all of them. In the Oliver Bond complex there is a particular issue we are trying to grapple with at the moment. We are clear on Pearse House, but the other projects are all moving along well. There is an issue at the Oliver Bond complex. We will find a solution to it and we will be looking at options for the best way to do that in the coming weeks.
Aubrey McCarthy (Independent)
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Does Dublin City Council have enough resources, such as planners? Does it have enough capacity to carry out the work needed?
Mr. Mick Mulhern:
I do not think anyone working in infrastructure delivery at the moment would say they have full capacity. Everyone recognises it is challenging to get all the staff we need to be able to deliver at the pace we need to deliver. That is across the board in all infrastructure delivery at the moment.
Our chief executive and the Department approved additional workforce plan staff for capital delivery in Dublin City Council in 2025. I chair the CCMA working group on local authority resources for housing delivery. We are engaging with the Department on a request for additional staff in all 31 local authorities. More staff would enable us to deliver quickly, but it is not necessarily possible to get all those staff. However, the Department supported our initial request and, when we go back with a request for the whole sector, we will be engaging with the Department, the Minister and the Department of public expenditure on securing approval for those additional resources as a sector.
Aubrey McCarthy (Independent)
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How long does it take typically after a regeneration project is identified to carry out the work on the ground from start to finish?
Aubrey McCarthy (Independent)
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Most of the sites have people though.
Mr. Mick Mulhern:
No, a lot of our schemes do not. A lot of our land does not have people living on it. I cannot give an exact percentage now, but those sites take, depending on the size, anywhere between five and seven years from when we ask Mr. Donlon and tell him this is the site to handing over keys for people to move in. When dealing with estate complex regeneration, we have to add in that, in many instances, like in the Oliver Bond complex, where more than 1,000 people live, it brings a huge level of additional complexity into how we manage it. There are other estate complexes we have recently done. Canon Burke Flats was ten units and it happened much faster.
Again, it depends on the scale of the project or the scale of the flat complex, the number of people living in it and the complexity. I could not say what the standard timeline is to do a flat complex regeneration. We could do it in five to seven years for a cleared site or a site where we can go in and knock down a building.
Aubrey McCarthy (Independent)
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One thing I found through my role as chair of the community council in Bluebell is that consultation with residents is key. There was an amazing lady in Dublin City Council, Eileen Martin, who I think has since retired. She was able to smooth out any rough areas. As I mention in the Seanad weekly, it is all about the consultation process and bringing the residents on board. That is a hugely important aspect of regeneration.
What does IHREC see as the biggest gap here between the ambition we have for regeneration and actual delivery of the housing?
Ms Deirdre Malone:
In 2017, the European Committee of Social Rights explicitly stated that while housing might fall under the local authority administration, national government remains responsible for implementation. That requires co-ordination between central government, local authorities and communities. It is clear that where regeneration is stalled or delayed, residents suffer. Residents continue to experience long periods in conditions that were identified back in 2017 as inadequate. This raises human rights and equality concerns. For us, the key question is whether the State is taking effective, timely and proportionate measures to vindicate residents.
Aubrey McCarthy (Independent)
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What reforms would fix that?
Ms Deirdre Malone:
From our perspective, what we have called for in relation to housing is a significant scaling up of social and affordable housing activity, greater accountability for delays when it comes to regeneration projects, stronger protections for tenants when it comes to social housing and ratification by Ireland of Article 31, which still is not ratified. It is clear what is required and responsibility remains firmly on the State. Although there is, of course, responsibility with local authorities, ultimately the responsibility is on the State to deliver what is in reality protection for the right to adequate housing for tenants.
Aubrey McCarthy (Independent)
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Does the Department accept the criticisms of IHREC?
Mr. Paul Benson:
As mentioned in the opening statement, the ambition is that all social housing tenants will be living in a house of sufficient standard. It is clear from the findings of the collective complaint that this is not always the case. That is why regeneration is being done. That is why the stock improvement programmes are there. That is why we have moved the local authority sector from a response-based approach to maintenance to a planned maintenance approach. We have all 31 local authorities carrying out stock condition surveys of every single local authority-owned social home so that this can inform future work programmes that can be funded by the Department and local authorities combined, to ensure that we meet those standards, which is essential. The Department is not satisfied that every tenant is living in houses of the appropriate standard. That is clear from the collective complaint findings. While it is slower than I think all of us here would like, progress is being made. That is the first important thing to acknowledge. It is difficult and challenging, with a lot of consultation required. People have genuine concerns in these communities about what is going to happen. Nobody likes change. People are always looking to see how it affects them, and that does slow things down, but it is legitimate to have those concerns.
There are expectations as well. All I can say is that the Department is fully committed to regeneration and we have put our money where our mouth is. There is €260 million available this year to the local authority sector for stock improvement programmes. We have funded Dublin City Council to the tune of €1 billion since 2016 on projects that are either on site, have been completed or are working their way through the design process. That is a huge investment and that is just Dublin city. We are doing the same thing across Cork and Limerick. We have done it in Sligo and Louth and the intention is to have a national regeneration programme because these challenges are not just related to the large urban centres. There are challenging estates right across the country, in every local authority area. We need to spread out the regeneration programme across all 31 local authorities to ensure we get to every single tenant living in housing that is not of an acceptable standard.
Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North-West, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the witnesses for being here today. I acknowledge the good work being done. At committee meetings like this, we focus on areas where issues arise. That is important because we want to try to prevent future delays or deferral of important works. I want to try to get to the bottom of what happened with the Oliver Bond flat complex. I apologise as I was in the Dáil for Leaders' Questions earlier and may have missed some of the contributions. The letter Mr. Benson sent to Dublin City Council is the one that has caused all the trouble. When was that letter sent and who was it sent to?
Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North-West, Fianna Fail)
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Was it Mr. Benson's expectation at that point that Dublin City Council would inform the local authority members of the decision?
Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North-West, Fianna Fail)
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It was likely, however, that the council would inform the members.
Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North-West, Fianna Fail)
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The letter obviously came after Mr. Benson's consideration of the proposal put by Dublin City Council. Had there been meetings between Dublin City Council and the Department in regard to the proposal?
Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North-West, Fianna Fail)
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I imagine the letter was a formalisation of what had been previously communicated at a meeting. Was this a surprise to Dublin City Council?
Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North-West, Fianna Fail)
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My question was whether Dublin City Council knew it was getting a letter, effectively out of the blue, to say the Department was not approving the proposal?
Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North-West, Fianna Fail)
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Would that be Mr. Mulhern's view? Was it a surprise to receive that information? I accept he is in a difficult position here because this is his parent Department, but it is important people know what happened.
Mr. Mick Mulhern:
Following the original stage 1 approval, we were progressing the scheme and Ms Egan, the project lead, had several meetings with the Department during that time, including explaining why a courtyard block and a mansard option could not happen. There were several meetings during 2024 and into 2025. When the Department advised us of the approach to be taken for Pierce House, there were several more meetings on that and we continued to set out our preferred approach of doing blocks L, M and N and a new build at Bridgefoot Street.
Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North-West, Fianna Fail)
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Was the letter in April a formal confirmation of what Mr. Mulhern understood or was it new?
Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North-West, Fianna Fail)
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That is Mr. Mulhern's position. Does Mr. Benson accept that issuing a letter of this sort would effectively create the controversy we have seen? Mr. Mulhern was hardly going to sit on the letter and not share it with anybody.
Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North-West, Fianna Fail)
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Let me put it this way. Does Mr. Benson accept that it was not going to be a popular decision?
Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North-West, Fianna Fail)
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The councillors are of the misunderstanding that they work for Dublin City Council rather than the Department, right? Mr. Mulhern works for Dublin City Council, not the Department. Mr. Benson works for the Department. My point is, when sending such significant correspondence, did Mr. Benson appreciate that there would be very significant negative connotations, politically and in terms of the impact on the community?
Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North-West, Fianna Fail)
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Mr. Benson was of the view that this letter would be sent and that discussions would continue. Is that correct?
Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North-West, Fianna Fail)
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How then are members of the regeneration board, the housing SBC and the local authority of the view that funding had been pulled?
Mr. Paul Benson:
I am not sure, because the stage 1 approval still exists. It is there for over €20 million. Dublin City Council had given us an update to say where it was going with it. We were concerned that it was further reducing the numbers. It went from 74 originally and in the stage 1 approval we approved 58-----
Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North-West, Fianna Fail)
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Can I-----
Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North-West, Fianna Fail)
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-----argue that when the Department issues an instruction like this, it has an impact and it sends a signal. The obligation on the Department is not just to brief the Minister, the local TDs and other elected members on it. If Mr. Benson is saying there is nothing to see here, nobody else knew that.
Mr. Paul Benson:
I did not use the words, "There is nothing to see here." There obviously is. What is to see is that the Department approved, under stage 1, a reduction in the number of homes in the Oliver Bond complex from 74 to 58, at a cost of over €20 million.
A submission that came in to us further reduced that number to 46, notwithstanding that our policy was to try to minimise the number of homes that would be lost.
Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North-West, Fianna Fail)
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Does Mr. Benson accept that regeneration is often about replanning for an area rather than simply providing an equal number of homes?
Mr. Paul Benson:
There is no requirement set by the Department to have the same number of homes. In fact, after most of Dublin City Council's regeneration projects, there has been a greater number. Our policy is that losses should be minimised, for obvious reasons. There are 60,000 people on the housing waiting list. Eighty-three percent of such cases relate to housing for single persons and couples in the Dublin City Council area.
Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North-West, Fianna Fail)
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I am very much aware of that.
Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North-West, Fianna Fail)
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I am very much aware of that statistic and support it-----
Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North-West, Fianna Fail)
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-----when people object to one- and two-bed units. However, Dublin City Council is the housing authority. It is providing a mix over the whole city. Why is there a Department of housing proposal for this site when we have a housing authority that is responsible for providing housing? The Department of housing should be providing the funding and the overall housing policy, not prescribing a design for a site. That is what we pay a housing authority for.
Mr. Paul Benson:
I accept completely what the Deputy is saying. I suggest that the Department was trying to be helpful in reinforcing the policy, which is to try to minimise the losses and ensure we do not lose homes that the vast majority of people on the housing waiting list actually need, which are studios and one-bed units. These are needed in 83% of cases on the Dublin City Council housing waiting list.
This is only one part of a much bigger Oliver Bond regeneration project. Within that, there is the opportunity to provide for all of the residents who live in overcrowded conditions in Oliver Bond flats without them having to move anywhere. However, the proposal before us is going to see 28 households without a home in the Oliver Bond complex after phase 1 of the regeneration. Nobody has answered satisfactorily where those people are to go.
Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North-West, Fianna Fail)
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I accept that but, again, it is as much about redesign as the number. There is housing provided across the entire city, and Dublin City Council regularly reassigns tenants and offers opportunities to tenants if that is required.
The reason I am so passionate about this is that, while the Oliver Bond complex is not in my area, I saw exactly the same issue arise with a very small scheme in my area, at Berryfield. Mr. Benson is very familiar with it. Six years after first getting planning permission, because of the back-and-forth over how many one-beds and two-beds were in the scheme, we still have no houses on the site. We are building them to stop the antisocial behaviour and to regenerate and replan the area. At times, the Department seriously overreaches into the area of responsibility of Dublin City Council. Mr. Benson has said it is being helpful but I would argue that what has occurred in the last number of weeks has proved incredibly unhelpful.
Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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In case people do not understand, phase 1A is literally 10 yards from the Oliver Bond complex. I do not know if the guests know the geography of the area or the residents. I can guarantee that if I said to the residents in the morning that 40 new-build homes were being offered 10 yards away, literally across the road, they would jump at the opportunity. It would facilitate the movement of people so the work could be done. I do not see any logic to the decision by the Department.
At the end of the day, we are talking about residents and the conditions they are living in. What this decision has done is shatter their hopes. They have invested personal time, but also hope, in a process. They were all eager to see the start of this. I do not know whether Mr. Benson has visited some of the homes in Oliver Bond and other complexes, but he may know the scale of the problems people are living with. It is not just about the antisocial behaviour that has been in the media; it is also about the scale of the dampness because the old fabric is falling apart or not used properly.
I have a number of pictures to hand that I will send on to the witnesses. They were taken only last week. They show the level of black mould and furry white mould coming through it. It does not matter what the residents do to tackle that; it keeps coming back. The only way to address the problems is to fully retrofit and change the make-up of the flats. That means, as in the case of Dolphin House, the loss of some accommodation. You cannot have the same number of flats and bedrooms because they are tiny by today's standards. At the same time, the Department and the council are asking the residents, the tenants, to pay a rent, which in fact has increased substantially recently. They have to sit and live in these conditions.
Would Mr. Benson accept that the Department's decision is flawed from the residents' point of view, not from his own point of view, because there is warped logic? Would the Department support the residents by funding a rent pause so they can spend the money on trying to tidy up their homes while waiting another five or ten years for the homes to be regenerated?
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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Who does the Deputy want to take that question? Dublin City Council or the Department?
Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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I was aiming it at the Department, so Mr. Benson might answer.
Mr. Paul Benson:
I do not accept that the Department's position is flawed. There is a logic to it. As I keep saying, our door is open. This is part of an iterative process. Mr. Mulhern described it quite well. As projects move through the various phases and the design cycle, issues arise and have to be discussed.
Our funding remains in place. We are committed to the regeneration of Oliver Bond House. We want to see the loss of homes minimised. We accepted in our stage 1 approval that there would be a loss of homes. It was clear that the number would reduce from the original 74 to 58, the number approved. The submission that has come in now reduces that to 46, which is a further 20% reduction. That obviously gives rise to concerns in the Department.
It is being repeated continually that the Department has a policy of no reduction in homes. That is just not the case. We have facilitated amalgamations right across Dublin city. Sometimes new-build homes will compensate for that; sometimes the original number is exceeded. I believe we can sort this out with Dublin City Council and the residents. All of the residents, who are living in overcrowded, substandard accommodation, can be accommodated within Oliver Bond if we can all sit down to discuss this logically and determine how to make it happen. The master plan that Dublin City Council has sent to us has a lot to commend it. I thank Dublin City Council for submitting it to us. If we could get agreement on the master plan, it would be a step forward in providing for the existing residents and future residents of Oliver Bond, while also ensuring that the houses provided post regeneration meet the identified need not just of the families currently living in overcrowded conditions but also of those on the waiting list, 83% of whom are single adults and couples.
I cannot comment on the rent. That is a matter for Dublin City Council.
Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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Dublin City Council could not fund that without the support of the Department, so it is an issue for the Department.
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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Could Dublin City Council comment on Deputy Ó Snodaigh's point on rents?
Mr. Mick Mulhern:
Dublin City Council has increased the rent. It was increased as of 6 April. That is based on differential rent, and that applies to all tenancies, regardless of the quality of accommodation. It is based on income and a national approach is taken.
At Oliver Bond alone, we have increased our planned maintenance budget from €57.5 million last year to €78 million this year, and that will increase again, to €83 million, next year. All of that money will be spent on upgrading our housing stock through energy-efficiency works, planned maintenance works and so on. In Oliver Bond over the last three or four years, we have replaced around 200 windows and carried out mechanical ventilation works in 212 flats. We have undertaken insulation works in 48 flats, upgraded the refuse bin storage area, carried out works on drainage and gullies, and engaged in pest control. We have also upgraded 126 homes through void works over the past eight years. We are committed to continuing to do maintenance work at Oliver Bond. We will continue to spend money there and engage with residents as issues arise.
Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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I acknowledge the work that has been done, but the scale of the works required, given that the plan is to regenerate the complex at some stage, involves an odd approach. As a landlord, Dublin City Council has to do that work, but, from the point of view of a funder, there seems to be a disconnect between that work and the overall project.
Have the witnesses taken proper cognisance of phase 1A, as proposed by the council, in terms of the rejection of the current plan from the council?
Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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Yes. Phase 1A is the one on Bridgefoot Street. Has that been taken into account in the rejection?
Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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I do not know whether Mr. Benson knows the area.
Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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Nothing is that independent of anything else.
Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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That is fine. I am talking about the site itself. The site on Bridgefoot Street is ten or 15 yards away from the other site. It is part of the area. I do not see how it can be disconnected from that. There are other sites in the area. There has been an increase in social housing in a very small footprint in order to accommodate the huge growth in the area.
Mr. Paul Benson:
I am very familiar with the area. I am familiar with Bond Street and Cork Street social housing, which was built and the park funded under the urban regeneration and development fund, URDF. The Department and Government have invested significant money in the Oliver Bond complex and wider area. A community regeneration officer is working there, paid for 100% by the Department. Some €2.5 million has been approved for precinct improvement works that Dublin City Council will get around to down there. We have €1.5 million approved for a community centre. Over €20 million in funding has been approved at stage 1 for the regeneration of Oliver Bond flats. That commitment and approval remains. Nothing has been refused or withdrawn. I cannot make that more clear.
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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Thank you.
Rory Hearne (Dublin North-West, Social Democrats)
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I understand the witnesses have been asked different questions. Does Mr. Mulhern have an estimate of when the regeneration of all of the flats complexes affected by substandard conditions will be completed? When will those currently living in substandard accommodation in flat complexes be living in decent suitable housing?
Mr. Mick Mulhern:
As I said, we are currently active on 23 flat complexes. I could give the Deputy timelines for those 23 flat complexes, which include upgrades and the delivery of 4,800 homes. They are at various stages. They range from the work in O'Devaney Gardens and St. Teresa Gardens to projects where design teams have been appointed and we are engaging with tenants to move people out. I have timelines for all of those. There are 211 flat complexes across the city. Those remaining are not currently in a programme for regeneration. That said, I have a planned maintenance programme for 2026 where we identify work to a variety of different flat complexes that we will carry out. It will not necessarily bring all of those up to the standard for rental homes that exists as of 2019, but it will make improvements. I do not have a timeline for when all of the flats in the city will be brought up to the necessary standard.
Rory Hearne (Dublin North-West, Social Democrats)
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Does Mr. Mulhern have any sense at all of the timeline? Will it be ten, 20 or 30 years?
Rory Hearne (Dublin North-West, Social Democrats)
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Does the Department accept that these substandard conditions are a breach of the right to adequate housing?
Mr. Paul Benson:
I said numerous times earlier in the meeting that we accept the findings of the collective complaint from 2014. We accept there are social homes that are not meeting the appropriate standards. That is why we have taken all of the actions we have taken. We have moved the local authority sector away from a response-based approach for maintenance to a planned maintenance approach. Every local authority in the country is doing stock condition surveys that will inform future work programmes. We have increased funding for stock improvements by 62% over the past ten years. We increased that by over 25% between 2025 and 2026. Some €260 million is available to local authorities this year for stock improvement works from the Department and Government. There is a huge commitment across the Department and Government to ensure that every social housing tenant is living in a home of the proper standard. There is also an acceptance that we are not there currently, but we are making progress. The collective complaint shone a spotlight on the situation. Since then, the Department has taken action and local authorities have responded. Mr. Mulhern described all of the projects that have been completed or are on site and planned. It is a slow work for good reason.
Rory Hearne (Dublin North-West, Social Democrats)
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There is a slow work and then there is the reality of people living in those conditions. From what Mr. Mulhern has set out, it appears there is no timeline for when people living in substandard conditions will no longer be living in substandard conditions in flat complexes.
Mr. Paul Benson:
I have clarified that €260 million is available this year from the Department for stock improvement works across the local authority sector. It is not the case that because a scheme is up for regeneration, it does not have to comply with standards. It does, and that is a matter for the local authorities. They have to budget adequately at budget time. Elected members and officials have to take that responsibility. Notwithstanding whatever local resources are available, the Department's funding is supplementary to that. It is very significant and it will continue to ensure that we get there.
Rory Hearne (Dublin North-West, Social Democrats)
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The finding was made in 2017, almost a decade ago. Progress has been unacceptably slow. People in Dolphin House, in flats in the north inner city and even those in the Oliver Bond complex see very little light on the horizon.
Mr. Paul Benson:
I accept there is a lot of work to be done, but we have to highlight that huge work has been done. A huge number of houses have been regenerated, apart from the bigger regeneration schemes which are not just in Dublin city but across Limerick, Cork, Sligo and Louth, and we want to spread that right across the country. There is €260 million available for the kind of stuff the committee is familiar with, namely, voids, energy efficiency, planned maintenance and adaptation works for older and disabled people. All of that improves stock and the living conditions for tenants. Over the past ten years, over €1 billion has been spent on such work.
Rory Hearne (Dublin North-West, Social Democrats)
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It is clearly inadequate. In the case of the Oliver Bond flats, has the intervention of the Department slowed things further? Does it show that the Department should not micromanage to that level? Dublin City Council is the housing body. Surely the Department should allow regeneration to go ahead in those situations when the council is coming forward with plans. Clearly, it is the housing body working with the community.
Mr. Paul Benson:
The Department has a responsibility for Exchequer funds. It has responsibility to ensure that all of the social housing is up to standard. It has a responsibility to try to ensure that the unit types and typologies meet the identified need for people who will be in social housing in the future. That is increasingly becoming single adults and couples looking for studios and one-bedroom apartments. We have set a policy around regeneration that is quite clear and has been articulated-----
Rory Hearne (Dublin North-West, Social Democrats)
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Mr. Benson does not trust Dublin City Council to do that. He said it is not doing that.
Mr. Paul Benson:
I have articulated very clearly to the local authorities that where something is submitted that we feel is not in keeping with that regeneration policy, we flag it. That is not to say it is the end of the matter. The letter does not suggest it is the end of the matter. Rather, it suggests that we need to consider-----
Rory Hearne (Dublin North-West, Social Democrats)
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Does Mr. Benson accept it is further delayed as a result and people are left living in worse conditions for longer?
Mr. Paul Benson:
It depends on the final outcome. Refurbishment like that for Pearse House is much quicker than amalgamation. Amalgamations mean serious interventions in Oliver Bond House. It means almost complete internal clearance with huge cost and time delays on site for contractors. That is the reality.
Rory Hearne (Dublin North-West, Social Democrats)
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We have to continue. I want to bring in IHREC. Does all of this show that there is no right to housing in reality in law in Ireland for tenants in social housing because there is no legal obligation on the State to act? Does it show that we need to put a right to housing in the Constitution?
Ms Deirdre Malone:
IHREC has called for a constitutional right to housing for a number of years, to be introduced by 2030. The constitutional right is one thing, but the lived reality is another. There is already, without a constitutional right to housing, a right to adequate housing, but obviously we have called for the ratification of Article 31, which has not been ratified by the State. In the meantime, there has been a public sector equality and human rights duty in place since 2014. In practical terms, that requires the use of human rights and equality impact assessments for all of the decisions, plans and programmes, whether by the Department, the State or Dublin City Council. That duty should be already embedded in governance structures, budgeting, procurement, inspection frameworks, planning and key performance indicators.
Rory Hearne (Dublin North-West, Social Democrats)
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Does this not show the inadequacy of that to force State bodies to act and meet their human rights obligations?
Ms Deirdre Malone:
We have been concerned since 2014 about the lack of engagement with the reality of the public sector duty and will push for that. In terms of the commission's position, it will consider the full remit of its powers in regard to these issues and is actively considering those the moment, up to and including speaking to or reaching out to the special rapporteur on adequate housing on this issue and considering the use of our powers.
The Deputy flagged the significant delay. We have funded, through grant schemes, the communities and people who have been affected by this delay over the past ten years. We are at the point where we are not seeing movement through the use of our powers on research, policy, engagement and grant making.
That is where the commission is at the moment in terms of actually considering the use of all its powers.
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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I wish to clarify with Mr. Mulhern what has changed between stage 1 approval for Oliver Bond flats in 2023 and the more recent proposal. Perhaps he would talk us through it in simple terms. At the point when stage 1 approval was granted, the principle was to move from 74 to 58 units. Will he describe how many of those were within blocks L, M and N and how many were to be new-build units within one of the courtyards of Oliver Bond House?
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Seventy-four in total.
Ms Collette Egan:
I will come in on that. The original stage 1 that was submitted was for 44 amalgamations in blocks L, M and N and the two houses and for 12 new-builds as infill. When we got stage 1 approval, the procurement of design team commenced. As we have said today, as the project moved along, they were looking at the breakdown of units and the invasiveness of the retrofits. There were more three-bedroom units proposed originally in the stage 1. Putting the three-beds into the infill was looked at then. As the design progressed, the design was costed and the cost of the infill was not viable. We knew we would not get funding for it. At that stage we would have had 50 units between blocks L, M and N and the two houses. However, the issue of the community centre arose. Originally it was to be in the centre of the Oliver Bond complex. Again, the cost of that was something we were looking at. Then it was to be moved out of Oliver Bond to a site on Bridgefoot Street, separate from the one we are now looking at. The community was not happy with that so we went back to the Department with a proposal to put it on the ground floor of block N. That has meant have lost scope to provide four extra homes in block N. That is why there are 46 rather than 50. We worked with the planners and our technical side and with the Department to get agreement to make sure the community centre was part of phase 1.
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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That is very helpful. So that we are clear, of that plan, 12 of those units were to be brand-new builds in the courtyard of Oliver Bond.
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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They were to be brand new builds, not amalgamations or anything else.
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Without putting words into Ms Egan's mouth, clearly when Dublin City Council realised how difficult it would be to get into those very tight courtyards and build those 12 extra units, that was no longer viable, and at that point the Bridgefoot Street option was looked at for a new build of 43 units.
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Mr. Benson said to Deputy Ó Snodaigh that he does not consider the Bridgefoot Street new-build phase 1A as part of the regeneration because it is a stand-alone new build that could be done anyway. However, he was willing to accept far fewer new-build units in the courtyard of Oliver Bond as part of the regeneration. They are literally a stone's throw away. Explain to me the logic of how you are willing to give stage 1 approval that involved 12 new builds in a courtyard but not to allow the funding proposal to continue as per the Dublin City Council correspondence in December, with 43 new-build units literally a 30-second walk away. Explain that to me. You seem to be giving the impression that there was a loss of 13 units, from 58 units to 46 units, between stage 1 and the December proposal. However, 12 of those are new builds and Dublin City Council came back with 43 new builds. In fact, there is a net gain of 15 units across the entire regeneration scheme. It seems one group of new builds is being treated differently from another. Explain that to me.
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Will Mr. Benson share them with us, for the committee members who have not read it?
Mr. Paul Benson:
I am happy to do that. It is clear from those conditions that it calls out the Department's concern about the loss of units. It requested Dublin City Council to revisit amalgamations, to see whether they are all absolutely essential. Although the approval was for 58 units, the Department was flagging clearly that there probably could be more units retained in that. There is no funding application to the Department for Bridgefoot Street. There is no stage 1 submission, there is no single stage submission. It is part of a master plan that we have had sight of, which I commended Dublin City Council on, and we have encouraged Dublin City Council to submit a single stage approval for Bridgefoot Street as soon as possible. I will repeat my comments from previously. Bridgefoot Street can be developed anyway.
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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As could the 12 units that were originally conceived inside the courtyard of Oliver Bond have been done separately to any of this and you would have got 12 extra units, so why are those units being treated as different from units directly across the street?
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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In what manner? By moving them all to studios?
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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I would be amazed if any of the residents that I know very well would agree with that. Is not the real problem here about amalgamations? The real challenge here, as Mr. Benson said directly, is that, as we know from the Ballybough House pilot, where Dublin City Council took units and completely stripped them out right to the brickwork, applied state-of-the-art energy efficiency insulation and reconfigured those to build good quality modern energy-efficient apartments, that is, as Mr. Benson said, expensive, but it is an investment in another hundred years of that home. The real issue here is not about the number of units, because we have demonstrated clearly fewer people will be living in Oliver Bond if the Department gets its way. The real issue is cost. The Department wants the council to spend far less per unit doing a lower level of upgrade without any of the substantive internal works because it will cost less money, irrespective of whether that meets the needs of the local community as expressed in the consultation or proper stock management over the entire life cycle of the development. One of the issues Gayle Cullen-Doyle from Oliver Bond House made clear to us on Saturday is that we have had temporary stopgap measures in the past. We have had limited upgrades. What Dublin City Council's plan is actually proposing is something much more profound: making these homes fit for purpose for another century, because they are structurally sound, poorly maintained as they are. Is the real issue here not that the Department does not want to spend the money to give the hard-working rent-paying community of Oliver Bond House adequate homes that meet modern standards? This is really about the cost and the cost of amalgamation. It is not about the number of people who are living there. That was accepted by Mr. Benson in his testimony in front of us. This is about the amount of money the Department is willing to spend.
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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No, I am sorry. This is my time-----
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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No, Chair, absolutely, I am in control.
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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I am Chairperson.
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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I accept that.
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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Deputy Ó Broin, please let Mr. Benson finish his point and I will add on the time.
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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I will not because, here is the problem. What-----
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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Hold on a second. You asked a question. You are asking him if he is willing to give an answer. He is prepared to give an answer. Please let him give an answer.
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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I am not convinced of that, but what Mr. Benson is referring to is in fact funding for new-build capital projects in the main on sites where the communities were flown to the four corners of the city a decade and two decades ago. In the main, they are brand new builds. The reason we are spending so much time on Oliver Bond House is that people from outside-----
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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Yes, and it is immediate.
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Chair, the time is mine. The reason we are spending so much time-----
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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In all fairness, I am the Chairperson. Please respect me in my role.
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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I absolutely respect your role as Chair. The reason we are spending so much time on this narrow issue is that Dublin City Council has a pipeline of large projects, typically fully occupied flat complexes from the thirties, forties and fifties. The issue of amalgamations goes to the heart of whether large-scale flat complexes can be upgraded to meet modern standards. That is the issue here. It is not about money that has been spent, for example, on new builds in St. Teresa's Gardens or O'Devaney Gardens or elsewhere; it is about those estates. The Department's resistance to the type of proposal around amalgamations that is proposed in the most recent iteration from Dublin City Council is a block to the progress of large-scale regeneration of those estates.
That is the bottom line here.
Mr. Paul Benson:
The Department has approved amalgamations across Dublin city. To suggest that we are opposed to amalgamations is absolutely incorrect. We will absolutely question whether it is the right approach if we are losing units. If the answer said yes, for technical, design or compliance reasons, we need to lose those units, the Department will support that. Between a mix of amalgamations and new builds, by and large, across the city, Dublin city has increased the number of homes in all the regeneration projects. The Department has funded those. If the Department was penny pinching, it would not be funding extra homes. It would be trying to get away with the minimum. The Department is looking for more homes. Supply is the solution to the challenges that this country faces in the housing space.
Value for money was mentioned earlier. It has to be considered.
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Of course.
Mr. Paul Benson:
In Oliver Bond, I have heard the proposal from Dublin City Council quite clearly. The Mansard route option which the Department floated was too expensive. The 12 new houses were too expensive. The proposal in the cost plan that is with us to turn eight one-beds into four three-beds is going to cost €3 million-odd. It will be over €700,000 per three-bed social home. How does the Deputy feel about that?
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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If that is the cost of bringing up the home that families, for decades, have been living in, which are in entirely inadequate standards, then so be it. But in fact, Mr. Benson knows well that the average cost of the Dublin City Council proposal across blocks L, M and N is significantly lower than that per unit. It is either done right this time or we fail to fund the best plan on the table and we end up coming back to this in ten years and in 20 years.
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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We will move on.
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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I will be very clear. Eighty-two fewer people are going to be able to live in this block because of the proposal. Those homes will not get the depth of the deep retrofit and restructuring that is required. Nobody wins from that. I am not saying the Department has not agreed some amalgamations. There are some amalgamations in the Department's proposal. I accept that. What I am saying is that it is clear that this is about funding. The Department does not want to fund this even though this is the best proposal on the table. That is what is really clear from the Department's testimony here today.
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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I thank Deputy Ó Broin. I am fulfilling my role as Chair. I am very flexible.
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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I appreciate that, Chair.
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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I will ask a couple of questions. I will bring in Deputies Sheehan and Hayes soon. I am trying to get my head around somewhere that I do not know quite well, to be quite honest. Deputy Ó Broin brought up the costs. What is the cost per unit? There were 74 units previously. A total of 74 families, single people or couples were in the 74 existing apartments. Am I right?
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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It was €460,000 per unit. Seventy-four families in the proposal-----
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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That is what I want to try to get to. What is the overall-----
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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As well as that, I would like the letter that was sent out to Dublin City Council to be shared in relation-----
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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Dublin City Council's proposal was for 46 units. Would that accommodate the 74 families? No. They are going to be housed elsewhere.
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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Dublin City Council had approval for 58 at the initial stage, but it went back in with 46 rather than accepting the 58. On what basis is Dublin City Council increasing or reducing based on the family sizes already within that complex?
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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Yes. Why is the Dublin City Council changing sizes? Is there overcrowding in some of the existing apartments? Is there a family unit in a two-bedroom apartment that should be in a three-bed or four-bed? Is this the reason that Dublin City Council is looking to-----
Mr. Mick Mulhern:
There is overcrowding in Oliver Bond. On average, currently, two-beds range between 47 sq. m and 53 sq. m. I do not have the figures for a one-bed off the top of my head, but they range from between about 35 sq. m and 43 sq. m currently. The existing two-beds are more aligned with the standard for a one-bed today that we would build. The one-beds that are on site at the moment are more aligned with the size of a studio that we would build today.
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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The reason for the changes-----
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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That is what I want to get to - the justification and the reason to go from 74 to 46. Dublin City Council is changing the footprint of apartments to bring them up to current sizes and to accommodate some families who are in overcrowded accommodation currently. Would I be right in saying that?
Ms Collette Egan:
In blocks L, M and N, there is no three-bed accommodation at the moment. The flats are all one-bed and two-bed. Our plan included putting in four three-bed flats into it. It would take two flats. Two two-beds would make a three-bed and it would meet all the standard building sizes.
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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Does Dublin City Council currently have a family within the block that needs a three-bed home?
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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I can see reasons for changes in figures, but then I can see the Department's point. If you have significant high figures of single people and couples looking for accommodation, I can understand that. Judging by the initial conversation I see here, I think Dublin City Council and the Department are close to coming to a solution between the two parties.
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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Which is where the solution needs to be found, not anywhere else.
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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What are the timelines or delays in getting to that point?
Mr. Mick Mulhern:
As I said, we are committed to go back to the community within about six weeks. I cannot remember exactly what the date is. At that point, there will be discussion for a period between all the parties to get to a solution. Depending on which option we go with, that could take different amounts of time to deliver. I cannot give the Cathaoirleach a timeline today, because, as Mr. Benson has already said, if it is different options, they all take different amounts of time to work up and progress. Once we have those options, we will be setting out timelines associated with each of those so that people can make an informed decision about which option to go with, which will include different amounts of time, costs, etc. We cannot give a timeline today, but we need to look back at that. That is what we are committed to doing over the next six weeks.
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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It is important to go back out to the community and the people living there and give reassurance. I hope they might have it from today and the comments made by Mr. Benson on behalf of the Department. The funding is there and it is not withdrawn. That is the message that needs to go out.
Mr. Mick Mulhern:
That is exactly what we said to the community. Ms Egan and Mr. Donlon met with the community last week. That is exactly what we said. We said that we will look at options. The Department, as Mr. Benson said, committed to providing funding to a scheme that we can all support on deliver. That is what we are working on now.
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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Were three-beds included in the initial stage 1, 58-unit option?
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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That was encompassed in it.
Mr. Paul Benson:
Across the entire complex, if you include Bridgefoot Street, I think there is something like over 140 new-builds will be built. The Department's point would be that overcrowded families can easily be accommodated within new-builds in purpose-built three-bed apartments. There is always a compromise with amalgamations. You are stuck with the existing building, effectively. That is the kind of discussion we need to have. Nobody is suggesting that the residents would not be accommodated in Oliver Bond going forward, the ones who are there and the ones that are overcrowded, or that people would end up in the situation previously that Deputy Ó Broin rightly described, when schemes were demolished and regeneration did not happen immediately afterwards, like O'Devaney Gardens and other places. The community was broken up. Everyone wants to avoid that here, but there are different ways of approaching it. We are quite close with Dublin City Council in terms of that, but it just needs a little bit more time.
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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I would ask that it take a very limited amount of time.
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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It should be a priority for the Department and Dublin City Council that the engagement take place immediately and to make sure that the engagement with residents would start henceforth and come to a conclusion. Unfortunately, the message that has gone out is that this money has gone. I am glad it has been clarified. The committee needs to send out the message that the money is not being decommissioned. That is important.
Conor Sheehan (Limerick City, Labour)
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I thank the witnesses and I ask them to be brief with their answers. Surely the crux of the issue here, besides the cost and funding, is the fact we have a development that was built in the 1930s that is now tied up in housing targets from 2026. There is an issue with a unit-density mandate. There needs to be a separate approach to developments like this. What will the knock-on effect be for developments such as Pearse House if this development is being knocked back by the Department because of the reduction in the number of units?
To Dublin City Council, I know the former Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, visited this site. Has there been a political change in approach between the one taken by him and the one being taken by the current Minister, Deputy Browne, to this? If somebody from Dublin City Council could answer that, please.
Conor Sheehan (Limerick City, Labour)
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Yes, I know about that.
Conor Sheehan (Limerick City, Labour)
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Yes, but will the issue that exists in this case, with the number of units being reduced and this application being knocked back, have a knock-on effect on other regeneration development?
Conor Sheehan (Limerick City, Labour)
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Has there been a change in approach between the former Minister and the current Minister?
Mr. Paul Benson:
The Department is probably best placed to answer that. If we look at the letters that issued on the regeneration project going back, certainly for the last five or six years or probably longer, we can see the Department continually call out a concern over the loss of homes and the need to ensure that any homes being lost are justified.
Conor Sheehan (Limerick City, Labour)
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Is Mr. Benson not concerned-----
Mr. Paul Benson:
Sorry, if I could just finish. The letter of October 2023, which precedes the Minister, Deputy Browne's assignment to the Custom House, calls that out. To suggest that there may have been a change of policy in the Department or that something may have happened with a change of Minister is completely incorrect.
Conor Sheehan (Limerick City, Labour)
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Okay. Prior to the appointment of the Minister, Deputy Browne, it is my understanding, from speaking to councillors in Dublin City Council, that the dialogue was focused on bed space as opposed to the number of units, and that when the Minister changed, the discussion then moved from a discussion based on bed space to a discussion based on the number of units.
Conor Sheehan (Limerick City, Labour)
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But not in the Oliver Bond complex is my understanding.
Conor Sheehan (Limerick City, Labour)
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Does Mr. Benson not accept that, with this development, unless there is an amalgamation of some sort of the units as proposed by Dublin City Council, we will end up with a complex of dark studios that are too small for modern living standards? That is my concern.
Conor Sheehan (Limerick City, Labour)
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Very briefly, what is the preference of the Department? Is it for more people to be housed on the site overall, or is it for an increased number of units?
Mr. Paul Benson:
The Department's preference is that we get a scheme that everyone is signed up to and agrees to that can be implemented. The Department is open to amalgamations. That is clear from our stage 1 approval, and it is clear from other developments around the city that we are open to that, but it should be justified.
Conor Sheehan (Limerick City, Labour)
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But it is clear from this that the preference is for additional units.
Conor Sheehan (Limerick City, Labour)
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Which is a more important metric for the Department?
Conor Sheehan (Limerick City, Labour)
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The number of units is more important, even if it leads to a net reduction in bed spaces.
Mr. Paul Benson:
I said it earlier, and obviously the Deputy was not here, looking at the master plan that Dublin City Council has submitted, if you follow the approach the Department has suggested for blocks L, M and N and then add in the rest of the master plan, there is very little difference in terms of bed spaces. We have not even seen an application for Bridgefoot Street. We have not seen a funding application for the blocks at the front. The number of bed spaces, the size of the units, what families go into those, whether people can be relocated into those and amalgamations can be discussed.
Conor Sheehan (Limerick City, Labour)
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But to get the number of bed spaces-----
Conor Sheehan (Limerick City, Labour)
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To get the number of bed spaces back up, that is all pending on these ancillary developments taking place as opposed to this specific development here. That is my point.
Conor Sheehan (Limerick City, Labour)
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It is 100 years old.
Mr. Paul Benson:
We are looking here at just 74 and trying to make assumptions about the number of people who will be living there post regeneration. It does not make any sense. You have to consider the overall master plan that Dublin City Council, in fairness, has submitted to us, and I commend it on it. We have looked at that and there has to be discussion about what happens with phase 1 in the context of that overall master plan and everyone in there understanding what the master plan is saying, because at the moment, everyone is focused on blocks L, M and N, and the residents in those are rightly focused on those. However, everyone needs to focus on the bigger master plan and on what is actually happening in Oliver Bond for the longer term, what it will look like post regeneration. Is everyone signed up to and happy with that and can it be delivered? That is where we need to have the discussion and that will start next week, with the Minister, Deputy Browne, facilitating a meeting between the forum and our Department. We will be in discussions with Dublin City Council, and I think we will solve this. The funding and the stage 1 approval are still in place, the master plan has been submitted to us, and it is being carried out. It gives everyone food for thought, but we need to start thinking in that bigger strategic space rather than in the corner of the site and 74 units.
Conor Sheehan (Limerick City, Labour)
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I represent Limerick City and we are scarred from bad and failed regeneration and master plans that never came to be.
Eoin Hayes (Dublin Bay South, Social Democrats)
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I thank Dublin City Council in particular for all the regeneration of housing that has happened. Most of it is very successful, and I do want to acknowledge that. I sit on the petitions committee. The Pearse House residents came into the committee and described the conditions that they have been living in for a very long time, and it was really harrowing. It actually is shocking to me every time I hear about it, and that is not to say that it is necessarily the fault of anybody in this room but there are rats, mould and cramped conditions. That is just dysfunctional and unacceptable. I think we all agree on that and we all want to do something about it. In that vein, I want to talk about solutions.
To Ms Malone, if we accept that there is a right to adequate housing, then Government must do all it can to realise that right. Would that be the human rights position when she thinks about these things?
Ms Deirdre Malone:
The right to housing is a human rights and equality issue. Under international human rights law the State has clear obligations to progressively realise the right to adequate housing and to remedy known substandard conditions without unreasonable delay and to the maximum of its available resources.
Eoin Hayes (Dublin Bay South, Social Democrats)
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That is an excellent point about the maximum of its available resources. Will Mr Mulhern give me a sense of what debt facilities are available to Dublin City Council for regeneration programmes?
What is the maximum that Dublin City Council could borrow? If it wanted to borrow to do regeneration, what is the maximum that will be available to Dublin City Council under the current rules that the Government and central government have set?
Eoin Hayes (Dublin Bay South, Social Democrats)
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The debt ceiling for the local authorities is €118 million, but none of that is being applied for social regeneration at the moment. Is that just because of the rules that are available in terms of utilisation of debt?
Eoin Hayes (Dublin Bay South, Social Democrats)
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I am not saying there is a requirement. I am asking whether there is an opportunity. The question is, therefore, to go through the 211 complexes in Dublin City Council, what would the total cost be in terms of regeneration? What is the guesstimate? Would it be in the hundreds of billions or tens of billions?
Eoin Hayes (Dublin Bay South, Social Democrats)
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That brings me to my next question. Is it the Department of housing's position that it would not provide debt facilities for the regeneration of housing to local authorities?
Eoin Hayes (Dublin Bay South, Social Democrats)
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But it is not sufficient. I think we would accept that, right?
Mr. Paul Benson:
Sorry, I would completely disagree. We have approved Dublin City Council for €1 billion in regeneration funding since 2016. It has drawn out €120 million on completed projects. It is in the process of drawing down €470 million on projects on site and there are projects valued at over €300 million that are working through the life cycle. At no point has the Department come anywhere near having to say to Dublin City Council, sorry, we cannot pay you, we do not have money.
Eoin Hayes (Dublin Bay South, Social Democrats)
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I understand-----
Eoin Hayes (Dublin Bay South, Social Democrats)
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Mr. Benson-----
Eoin Hayes (Dublin Bay South, Social Democrats)
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From the Exchequer.
Eoin Hayes (Dublin Bay South, Social Democrats)
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Therefore, if Dublin City Council came with all 211 flat complexes to be done over the next ten years, the Department would fund them. Is that what Mr. Benson is saying?
Eoin Hayes (Dublin Bay South, Social Democrats)
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Of course there are, but debt is one of the best ways of dealing with asset regeneration. It is an international norm. It is something that happens in social housing projects all across the world, so there is a real question here about the availability of debt facilities. This is actually my point. To be fair, this is not actually a Department of housing issue. This is a Department of Finance issue. However, there is €9 billion in cash on deposit in this State right now. It would be cost neutral to the State for a loan to be given to local authorities to regenerate these social housing developments. Instead, the councillors from Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, the Green Party and the Labour Party voted for rent increases to cover the costs of regeneration projects. There is a huge issue here in terms of local authorities being able to actually do this work and gain the proper financing. I do not understand why it is not a consideration to provide debt facilities to local authorities to do these renovation projects at speed and in good time.
Mr. Paul Benson:
Dublin City Council has to my knowledge not suggested at any time that it has increased rents or that it is going to use its rental income to fund regeneration. Regeneration is 100% Exchequer funded through grants to local authorities. The funding is there to meet the pipeline that is there, and as quickly as Dublin City Council can bring them forward, I am satisfied that the funding will be there. There is no funding issue when it comes to generation. Trying to confuse it with borrowing for other purposes a local authority might do just does not make sense.
Eoin Hayes (Dublin Bay South, Social Democrats)
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This is actually a really important point and it is really helpful to clarify this. It would be Mr. Benson's and the Department's view that there is no need for additional funding beyond what has been allocated by the Exchequer for the regeneration of social housing in Dublin city.
Eoin Hayes (Dublin Bay South, Social Democrats)
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Of course not.
Eoin Hayes (Dublin Bay South, Social Democrats)
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It is only able to do so many with the amount of the funding envelope that is available.
Eoin Hayes (Dublin Bay South, Social Democrats)
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But it does change the financing capacity in what it can do.
Eoin Hayes (Dublin Bay South, Social Democrats)
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I would respectfully disagree.
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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We are going to have to finish up there. I want to move on.
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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Apologies that I missed some of the session earlier. I thank all the representatives. I will pick up on the issue on which Deputy Hayes left off in terms of budget versus capacity. There is a given budget, but can Dublin City Council do more? Are there capacity constraints there or is it purely a budgetary constraint? In other words, does Dublin City Council find it difficult to get the contractors and the capacity? Is the reason we are only doing so much per annum down to budget or down to capacity?
Mr. Mick Mulhern:
I think it is a bit of both. Ultimately, from our perspective, as I have said previously, we are progressing over 100 projects on 100 different sites across the city for 12,000 homes. We do that directly ourselves. We have actually started a home building programme. We are about to appoint contractors to help us deliver 4,000 homes specifically over the next four years. We have partnered with the LDA on several sites, we have partnered with AHBs, and we have partnered with private partners. That additional partnering is to bring in that additional capacity where we need to bring that in. We do whatever we can. We pull as many levers as we can to be able to access as much capacity within the market that we can.
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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However, if Dublin City Council were given double the budget in the morning, there is a capacity constraint there.
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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Okay.
Mr. Paul Benson:
I will just make this point. There is no budget or ceiling on what Dublin City Council can spend on regeneration. We deal with projects as they are submitted to us. Funding has never been a constraint. In fact, I would ask any Deputy in this House if they can find a social housing project that was not funded by the Department or Government because there was no budget. I would be very interested, because I would be very concerned, because my experience is that everything that has come in, assuming it is a project that is viable, has support and does not fall at planning or contract stage or whatever else, gets funded. That is the actual reality. The funding is there.
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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Okay. Mr. Benson sees it more as a capacity issue.
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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Can I get an overall sense of where we are? Mr. Mulhern mentioned earlier that €120 million has been paid to date, €470 million is currently in the process of being drawn down and €125 million has been approved. That is a significant sum of money, undoubtedly. What is the progress report of where we are overall in terms of what needs to be done and what has been done? What way does Mr. Mulhern see that progress report at present? I know it is a very broad question, but there are 212 complexes and 45% of them over 50 years old. It sounds to me as if there a hell of a lot left to do. I am not taking away from what Mr. Mulhern has done, but where is the council in terms of a progress report?
Mr. Mick Mulhern:
In terms of works delivered over the last five or six years, we have completed regeneration projects in seven flat complexes, which have delivered about 712 homes. We are currently active on 23 flat complex across the city, with potential for 4,800 homes. Those are our regeneration works. Separate to that, we do our planned maintenance works, which involve doing upgrades in respect of energy efficiency, insulation, new doors, new windows, new kitchens, etc. We have increased our budget from last year from €57.5 million up to €78 million this year. That will go to €83 million next year. We are in the process of establishing a new asset management team. That team will do condition surveys and identify programmes of work for delivery over the future years. This year, we have taken on work, which is a new practice in Dublin City Council, where we bring our planned maintenance programme around our area committees for councillor input into that as well. We have completed that this year. We have a programme of planned maintenance works identified across a large number of houses and flat complexes across the city.
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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Thank you. Mr. Mulhern said that seven are done and 23 are in progress. Out of the 212, are we saying the 212 require significant works?
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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It would be 100 or so.
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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We are looking at approximately 100 complexes. If we have 30 in sight, we are less than halfway in terms of what is needed here.
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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So, we are less than halfway. We have the overall numbers in terms of hundreds of millions. Will Mr. Mulhern give us some information in terms of the average cost per unit? What is the upper end and lower end of the cost per unit of regenerating these units?
Mr. Mick Mulhern:
It depends on what approach we take and whether it is a demolition and new build versus going in and carrying out works, which is what we are going to do with Pearse House. A demolition and new build will range anywhere, and again I am blending the unit cost across studio to three-bed-----
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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It is blended between one-, two- and three-beds.
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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That is a demolition and rebuild.
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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So, demolition and rebuilding would cost somewhere between €400,000 and €500,000, blending the unit sizes.
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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The regeneration of an existing building-----
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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It is significantly less, on average.
Many of the buildings were built between 100 years ago and 40 years ago. There is a wide range and different conditions. We are now entering a phase in which we are promoting high-density development. Have we learned any lessons from what was done previously in terms of high density?
Mr. Paul Benson:
As I mentioned earlier, many of the regeneration projects completed by Dublin City Council have resulted in greater intensification of use and higher density. I would not necessarily describe many of the flat complexes as particularly dense. People are living tightly together but there are very large, wide-open spaces, so the overall density can be much lower than people might think. It is a design issue. It is being addressed in new developments and what we are seeing coming through in the form of social housing.
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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Could Dublin City Council comment on the density issue?
Mr. Martin Donlon:
A good case study is O'Devaney Gardens. The increase in density under the scheme resulted in about 205 units per hectare. There is a very generous public open space and central park, and it works very well. There is mixed tenure and the development very much meets the minimum design-manual standards. The issues in this regard compare with the issues and difficulties involved in bringing something like a Simms building up to current standards.
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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So, the density is 205 units per hectare.
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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That is mixed tenure, and mixed tenure is important-----
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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-----for building sustainable communities and so on. I thank the witnesses. I will leave it at that.
Thomas Gould (Cork North-Central, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the witnesses very much for being here. I have a couple of questions, so I will be as brief as I can.
First, I want to talk about the stock survey by Dublin City Council, which has been mentioned. I have listened to the previous Minister for housing, Deputy O’Brien, and the new Minister talking about stock surveys. Is the Department collating the information nationally and developing a picture of the condition of the social housing stock? If not, why not?
Mr. David Dalton:
Ultimately, developing a picture of the stock is a matter for local authorities themselves. However, the stock condition survey programme is now well advanced. We hope that 100% of the social housing stock will be surveyed by the end of 2030. Mr. Mulhern and his team have indicated that this will be the case for Dublin City Council.
At present, 12% of the stock has been surveyed. We expect that to reach 20% by the end of this year across all local authorities. Some authorities will be below that figure and some above it. Some might have a figure of 10% and some might have one well above 20%. We feel we are well on target to have 100% of the social housing stock surveyed by 2030.
Thomas Gould (Cork North-Central, Sinn Fein)
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One hundred percent surveyed by 2030. Would it not be important for the Department to have access to all the information so it can plan for maintenance? Leaving the information with each local authority is not enough. The Department and the Minister for housing, and also the Minister for Finance, must have access to the information if they are to allocate sufficient resources. We are aware that local authorities do not have the funding to maintain the stock adequately. The former Minister for housing, Deputy O'Brien, was sitting where the witnesses are now two years ago telling this committee that the work would be done. The witnesses are now telling us we will have to wait until 2030, while people continue to live in freezing cold houses with mould, dampness, rattling windows and doors, no insulation and heating systems that are not up to scratch. We have to wait until 2030 to find out what the problem is. That is not a bit acceptable.
Thomas Gould (Cork North-Central, Sinn Fein)
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We will not go over old ground. We disagree. Call me old-fashioned but if the Department is named the Department of housing, housing is what it is in charge of. From a human rights perspective, is it acceptable that people who pay their rent every week are living in cold, damp houses?
Ms Deirdre Malone:
From a human rights point of view, it is certainly not acceptable. It is beyond dispute that, in 2017, the committee found the conditions unacceptable. We know that this is fundamentally a human rights and equality issue. It is important to acknowledge the communities that have been fighting this battle since well before 2017 and their experience. It is also important to acknowledge that any solution to this problem must have the affected communities at the centre of decision-making and engaged in the resolution process.
Thomas Gould (Cork North-Central, Sinn Fein)
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Is it not vital that data be available so solutions and funding can be put in place to provide the proper standard of housing?
Thomas Gould (Cork North-Central, Sinn Fein)
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There is a stock survey being carried out by every local authority on every social house to see what condition it is in. If we are going to find a solution, we have to have the evidence. For generations, people have been putting up with inadequate social housing.
Dr. Iris Elliott:
The risk is the length of time the stock survey will take, as the Deputy rightly pointed out. It is a red herring in the sense that there was already enough evidence in 2017 to know Ireland was not compliant with international human rights standards around housing.
The work that my colleague Ms Fidelma Joyce has done, through civil society grants and engagement, shows there is no end to the evidence. The Deputies and Senators on this committee have spoken about the evidence from their constituencies. There is a purpose to different types of data but we do not need data to know Ireland is not in compliance and is not adequately meeting its obligations. We talk about the European Committee of Social Rights, under which the complaint was taken. In 2024, we were before the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The evidence is available. Further evidence may be useful to tailor the intervention, but the evidence available is sufficient. It keeps being presented and re-presented. It is presented to the Council of Europe, the EU and the UN, and-----
Thomas Gould (Cork North-Central, Sinn Fein)
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I apologise for cutting Dr. Elliott short but my time is limited. The points made are 100% correct. People should not be living in substandard, cold, wet and dark accommodation. A young child died in England a couple of years ago and a specific law was introduced to place a legal responsibility on local authorities not to leave families in those types of conditions.
I have been around some of the flat complexes in Dublin. I have seen the mould and damp and felt the coldness. We have the exact same conditions in Cork. People should not be living in these conditions. We talk about regeneration, as did Mr. Benson. I come from Knocknaheeny, where regeneration started in 2000. We are now in 2026 and it is not even half done. I had a public meeting last Thursday night with people from Killala Gardens, Kilmore Road and Dunmore Street. You should see the conditions they are living in. It could be eight to ten years before the houses are done. The local authority does not have the funding to do them up because it is saying it would be dead money. There are people in Mary Aikenhead Place, Glentrasna and many other places across the city whose houses are full of mould and damp.
A survey was leaked to us about maisonettes in Cork city that were dangerous. They were in Noonan Road, Baker’s Road, Cathedral Walk and the Togher flats. We are aware of reports that state there are flat complexes in Cork with balconies that are not safe. I am not sure about Dublin. Has Dublin City Council carried out those audits of its stock, and are we sure that they are safe? Maybe the Department wants to comment also.
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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I will allow a short answer. Mr. Mulhern and Mr. Dalton wanted to come back in on the previous point. I will give them 30 seconds in which to reply.
Mr. Mick Mulhern:
When we do condition surveys, that information does go down to the Department and it collates this. It is capturing all that information. I could not tell the committee exactly how many we have done to date but our target is 30,000 by the end of the year. As we do them, we are picking flat complexes or estates to do that we know require work. We go in and that helps us to define exactly what works are required. That information is shared with the Department . Then that is funded and we go and do those works. We do this through an order of priority. It is not the case that we get to the end of 2030 and then we do it. We do the condition surveys to inform our work programmes to go and do that planned maintenance. We are doing that live at the moment.
Mr. David Dalton:
I reiterate that these condition surveys are key to the planned maintenance work programmes that are being put in place by local authorities. The Department is working with local authorities to put in place those planned maintenance programmes and to support them. We are providing around €210 million this year for stock improvement programmes. We also support local authorities to move from what has been traditionally a reactive voids-based approach to managing their stock to a planned maintenance proactive approach. This will mean that all stock will then be supported and refurbished on a cyclical basis, rather than when it runs into such a state of disrepair that it requires a greater level of works and greater levels of funding to bring the properties back.
Thomas Gould (Cork North-Central, Sinn Fein)
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I will just point out that this will not happen until the surveys are done, so saying that now is no good to the people who are living in those conditions, and they know-----
Thomas Gould (Cork North-Central, Sinn Fein)
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If you want to see the houses, come down to Cork.
Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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I suppose my question is primarily to the Department. I want to ask the witnesses about Dublin flat complexes such as Oliver Bond, Pearse House and Countess Markievicz House. Perhaps the witnesses could also tell me where things are with the Cuffe Street flats as I have come into contact with those residents. These flat complexes are not in my constituency so I am not intimately familiar with them but I have canvassed these areas and I would get communications from people in those areas. Would there be an acceptance that they have been let down? It seems self-evident they have been let down. They have been living in substandard conditions. The regeneration and the addressing of these substandard conditions should have been done a long time ago. In 2014 one group had to go to the court in Europe to get an acknowledgement of the substandard conditions they were in. We are now in 2026, we are still squabbling and we still have not signed off on a plan. Would it be fair to say that the residents have been let down? If they have been let down, who has let them down?
Mr. Paul Benson:
The collective complaint is quite clear. It has shone a spotlight on some sub-standard accommodation particularly in the larger urban areas and it calls out some specific flat complexes in Dublin city. Some of those have been addressed. It calls out more systemic issues around why we got into that position, such as the lack of a strategic approach, the lack of information on stock and what condition it is in, and the lack of funding. The Department has dealt with those issues. The stock condition services are ongoing and they will inform future work programmes. The funding has been increased by 63%. It increased by 25% just between 2025 and 2026 to deal with this issue-----
Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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I did hear Mr. Benson on the funding and it is an interesting point that there would be no lack of funding but are there any lessons to be learned? To me, the lesson to be learned is that we are not listening to the residents. I feel the Department still has not quite got this lesson, but the witnesses can tell me if they think I am wrong. It took us all this time and we are still not fully listening to the residents. It was because the residents were saying that this was unacceptable and that they cannot live with damp and rats that they had to go to Europe, and still we are not listening to them. We are listening a bit more and there has been a bit of movement and we are sort of getting somewhere, but even at this last minute we are letting them down, as I see it, because the Department did not agree with a plan that had been agreed between the residents and Dublin City Council.
Mr. Paul Benson:
Just to go back over something I said earlier, a huge amount has been done, there is a huge amount on site, and there is a huge amount planned. It needs to be acknowledged that huge progress has been made. It is not perfect but we are getting there. In terms of not being aware or not listening to residents, the Deputy probably knows that I spent 30 years in a local authority system listening to residents, listening to community groups and working with them in delivering projects. I know what it is like and I know what Mr. Mulhern's job is like. I understand completely. I have been in flat complexes right across this country from Cork to Limerick to Louth to Sligo and to Dublin. I am very familiar with them. I am very familiar with the ones that are really good quality and the ones that are not so good.
Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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Why does it take so long?
Mr. Paul Benson:
Because there has been no systemic and strategic approach to the management of social housing stock by local authorities over the last 100 years. That is something the Department has put in place since the collective complaints shone a spotlight on it, that there was not the knowledge about what the condition of the stock is, and that we need to find out what it is. This is why the stock condition surveys are happening. We are putting funding in place for regeneration and for stock improvement works. Massive money is being spent on energy efficiency. Huge money is being spent on voids. Huge money is being spent on adaptations for older and disabled persons who are living in that accommodation, the kind of work members will be familiar with, whether it is a level like showers or whatever, and it is all being done. I accept completely that more needs to be done but I cannot sit here and accept that the Department is not listening to residents and is not aware of the issues. I personally am very aware of the issues right across the country-----
Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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You seem to be saying-----
Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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Mr. Benson seems to be saying it is the lack of a strategic approach by the local authorities. Essentially, that is what he seems to be saying. Maybe the local authorities might have something to say about that. I am trying to get to how it has taken so long and how are we going to make sure this does not happen again. I will give the witnesses a real up-to-date example in my area in Shanganagh. Residents are complaining about the heating systems affecting their skin. These are new all-singing and all-dancing modern heating systems. There are complaints coming in about them impacting on the residents' skin. I hope that people are listening to that because the residents should not have to say it. They should have to say it once and then people should go "Right, that is a problem and we had better address that", and get to the bottom of it. I am just flagging that as an issue. This brand-new flagship development of apartment complexes has problems emerging already with the heating systems. Hopefully these are teething problems and not fundamental. What does the council say about why it has taken so long? The Department seems to be saying it was lack of strategic vision or strategic planning on their part.
Mr. Paul Benson:
I will just clarify. I said that there was a lack of strategic planning and that there was no stock condition service being done, with everything being reactive maintenance. but I did not say the local authorities were fully to blame for that. We are all to blame for that, including officials and elected members at local authority and central government levels. As I said earlier, the collective complaints shone a spotlight on this and it is being addressed. It is going to take time but there is a commitment at Government level, at Department level and right across local authorities to get on with it. This is being done through the stock condition service, which will inform work programmes, and the Department then will help to fund those. That is the position we are in. Progress has been made. It is not perfect and I accept that completely but we are getting there.
Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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I have one last question in my last 30 seconds. On moving things forward, the witnesses are saying that capacity, and not funding, is the big problem. We will take you at your word and we will see how that plays out in the next while. What are we going to do to improve the capacity situation? Things are still taking too long. I am still getting tenants coming to me and saying "I cannot use my bath because I have mobility problems but it will take a year to get a walk-in shower". The person has a bath but cannot get into it. I think it should not take a year. Does it really take that long? How do we address that? How do we improve the capacity issues? Would the Department or the council representatives like to respond to that?
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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In 30 seconds.
Mr. Mick Mulhern:
There are two things we are doing right now. I do not believe the Chair was in earlier when I mentioned the working group for the County and City Management Association, CCMA, to look at additional capacity within local authorities, in the first instance on the housing delivery side, and then it will look at maintenance. We have a draft business case ready, which will go down to the Department imminently, seeking a sizable chunk of increased staff for delivery. Following on the back of that we would be looking for an increased staff around housing maintenance. In terms of the delivery side-----
Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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Will they be directly employed?
Mr. Mick Mulhern:
Yes. In addition to that, on our housing delivery side we are in the process of establishing a sizeable, circa €2 billion, construction framework to deliver 4,000 homes on Dublin City Council land. That will bring the contractors around the table with us to be able to support delivery quickly. These are two immediate things we are doing to try to address some of the capacity issues.
Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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Thank you.
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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I thank the witnesses. I will just sneak in something at the very end about Longford, just before we finish.
We were speaking about voids and I compliment our local authority on the significant work it has done over the past couple of years. There has been a significant shortfall in funding for the work done and what is granted from the Department. I heard mention of 100% funding, or significantly close to it, for Dublin City Council for projects. It has put a strain on our local authority because we have spent €5 million in a small county on a voids programme. We have reduced our vacant stock significantly over a two-year period. This was a decision that was taken and I want to highlight it. When I hear how much money has gone into the city council-----
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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I have a point of information and it is not a question. The council and the Department gave commitments to share some documentation from 2023, 2025 and 2026 with the committee. It would be great if it was sent to the Chair because this is an issue we will return to.
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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And a copy of the letter that was sent so that we can see it.
I propose that we postpone our private session until next week as we have had a longer session. Is that agreed? Agreed. This has been a good discussion and I wanted all members to have an opportunity. I thank all of our witnesses for a very interesting and detailed discussion. I propose that we suspend for 30 minutes and we will resume in public session with Community Action Network and residents. Is that agreed? Agreed.
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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We will now resume our discussion on Dublin inner city flat complex regeneration. From Community Action Network and residents' associations I welcome Ms. Debbie Mulhall, community worker and Dolphin House resident; Ms Gayle Cullen-Doyle, Oliver Bond House resident; Mr. Neil Maloney, Pearse House resident; Ms. Una Lowry, CEO of Dublin South City Partnership; Ms. Cecilia Forrestal, Community Action Network; and Mr. Peter Dorman, Partners Training For Transformation and Community Action Network.
Before we start I will explain some limitations to parliamentary privilege and the practice of the Houses as regards references witnesses may make to another person in their evidence. The evidence of witnesses physically present, or who give evidence from within the confines of the parliamentary precincts, is protected pursuant to both the Constitution and statute by absolute privilege. Witnesses are again reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name or in any such way as to make him, her or it identifiable, or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative they comply with any such direction.
The opening statements have been circulated to members. Is it agreed that we will publish the opening statements? Agreed. I will now give an opportunity to the witnesses to read their opening statements and I ask them to keep to a maximum of three minutes, if they could.
Mr. Peter Dorman:
I thank the Chair and members of the committee for inviting us here today. I will focus on the collective complaint and provide some background to that. In 2014, a collective complaint was submitted by the International Federation for Human Rights, FIDH, on behalf of families residing in local authority housing across Ireland to the Council of Europe's Committee of Social Rights. The complaint asserted that the condition of their housing constituted a violation of their housing rights under Article 16 of the revised European Social Charter. It was based on extensive evidence gathered over several years, documenting issues, including persistent condensation and aspergillus fumigatus mould spores, caused by the building structures that threaten the health of residents, particularly children, older people and people with compromised immune systems or respiratory illnesses. Despite this, damage due to condensation is, according to a number of tenant handbooks, the sole responsibility of tenants.
Other issues documented were: ingress of contaminated wastewater, which testing has shown to have the potency of raw sewage; cold interiors due to poor insulation and the quality of doors and windows, and residents leaving windows open to control condensation; poor responses to maintenance issues; and regeneration programmes taking up to and over 30 years.
In 2017, after an extended debate over the admissibility of the complaint, the European Committee of Social Rights decided that the Irish Government had failed to take sufficient and timely measures to ensure adequate housing standards for a significant number of families living in local authority housing. Consequently, it held that there was a violation of Article 16 of the charter in this respect. This decision was made public in early 2018. Last year, in a review of the situation since then, Professor Aoife Dolan, chair of the Committee of Social Rights, expressed dismay that after eight years, Ireland has not come near to conformity.
What has happened in the intervening eight years? I will focus on Dublin, which has the highest concentration of local authority estates. Almost immediately after the decision by the Council of Europe, Dublin City Council acknowledged that most flats complexes in the city were in need of substantial repair. In 2018, a long-term plan was presented to the council detailing a 20-year programme of regeneration, to be funded through the national urban regeneration and development fund. However, despite this promising start, very little of this funding was put to this use. Indeed in 2023, a departmental circular calling for drawdowns from the fund complained that "While just under €1.5bn was originally allocated under Calls 1 and 2 only €144m had been drawn down by local authorities at the end of 2022." Even allowing for Covid, we can see that much of the budget allocations for urban regeneration has not gone on addressing the health and life-threatening conditions for families in these flats. Professor Nolan emphasised the point that funding plans on paper without funding being actually drawn down or published action plans will not bring a state into conformity.
More recently, other barriers have been placed in front of regeneration schemes, including, for example, the determination that Herbert Simms complexes such as Pearse House cannot be refurbished as they are listed buildings, despite the fact that successful refurbishment has taken place in Simms-designed flats in Ballybough and elsewhere. Another example is the decision not to progress regeneration that involves combining one-bedroom flats into two-bedroom units as this will reduce stock, despite the fact that this means leaving people in health-threatening conditions. This resulted in the stalling of the Oliver Bond complex regeneration last week.
The Council of Europe expressed particular concern about the lack of stock condition surveys by the State to assess housing conditions, noting in 2018 that the last national survey had taken place in 2002. The response of the State was to await the condition surveys by local authorities which appear to have been very patchy and cursory. In 2023, the State report to the Council of Europe announced that the Local Government Management Agency had been given the role of overseeing a comprehensive stock condition survey programme over five years. This is very welcome. However, there is no public information on the extent of these surveys and no results to date. Nor is there any public plan for nationwide preventative maintenance to address the issues raised by the surveys.
Professor Nolan, in her conference address to us, said:
In Ireland, part of the difficulty appears to be the responsibility for housing being in the purview of local authorities. However, from the perspective of the Charter this delegating does not serve as some sort of get-out-of-jail-free card for Government. We have repeatedly in case law and we have said to the Irish Government, that the ultimate responsibility for, at a very minimum, supervision and regulation of actions lies with Governments, which must be able to show that Local Authorities and itself have taken actions and practical steps to show local action is affected.
We ask the Oireachtas joint committee to assist in ensuring Ireland comes into conformity with its obligations under Article 16 of the Charter of Human Rights by committing to meeting twice a year in today's format, putting an ongoing focus on regeneration, not just in Dublin but nationwide. The committee should put on the agenda of the next private session a request to the Minister to appoint a director of regeneration with dedicated staff and resources within Dublin City Council. This office would collaborate with an expanded community of practice in local areas in need of regeneration.
We call for the publication of data on the scope and outcomes of stock condition surveys and a national time-bound and costed programme of preventative maintenance and regeneration, with direction to local authorities to implement it. There need to be policy changes to place the poor conditions of local authority residents' homes at the heart of decisions on funding and planning for regeneration and effective maintenance. This will include abolishing recent policies regarding stock additionality, size of families within units and the number of units required within complexes. Local authorities need to be directed to remove sole responsibility for condensation damage clauses from tenant handbooks. We essentially want to see human rights and the protection of health and well-being of residents put at the centre of policies. We cannot have policies that frustrate regeneration.
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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I know I am jumping ahead, but I think the members would be happy to meet twice a year. We want that on our agenda. We want to revisit and benchmark many of our projects. We have done a number of site visits on another issue. They give us all a sense of the real issue when we are out on the ground. We visited another apartment complex with a duplex issue. It gives us a better sense of the issues. We will discuss it, but I would be favourably disposed to that.
Ms Debbie Mulhall:
I am a resident of Dolphin House and I want to tell a story. Once upon a time, there was a kingdom not too far away called Dolphin House. It was a large kingdom that was built in the 1950s. A large community lived there and lots of these are generational. I am from the third generation of five generations who lived there. My grandmother lived there from when they were first built. She moved in from the tenements. She was so proud of her home and where she lived and she instilled that pride in me.
Over the years, the flats started to decline, not because of the residents but because the buildings were getting older and times were changing, with new electrical appliances being installed in homes. Problems that occurred were damp, mould and sewage, so much so that residents would not invite people into their homes because of the really nasty smell. These residents did not want to move out of their homes but they wanted the issues fixed.
In 2011, we did door-to-door surveys and found that a lot more residents had issues in their homes. One of those statistics that really shocked me was that children living in our area were missing out on education because of their living conditions. It is so unfair for any child not to have their needs met, not because of their families but because they have medical issues due to where they live. Lots of children were using inhalers for breathing problems. We gathered the evidence and presented it to Dublin City Council, which said it would start a consultation and begin regeneration in our community with brand-new homes. We were so optimistic about the outcome.
We also brought the collective complaint to Europe in 2017 and, again, we were delighted when we were told what we already knew, which was that the State was in breach of human rights. We were told at that time that DCC was going to do a full condition survey of its properties but to my knowledge, this has not happened and, if it has, I have not heard anything about it.
When the Dolphin House regeneration began, people started to believe that this was a new beginning. It took four years to complete phase 1 of the build, bearing in mind that 30% were new builds and the rest were retrofits. The cost of this to us, the taxpayers, was €26 million. This fairytale does not have a happy ending. The new buildings are flawed in so many ways. We started telling DCC about this and, again, it fell on deaf ears. We then got an independent survey done and the findings were very shocking. We also presented this survey to the council and nothing happened. These residents had roofs that were leaking and pipes that exploded causing major damage to family homes. In the meantime, we also still have 180 residents living in homes that are over 70 years old. We asked DCC to replace windows, as residents are paying colossal energy bills to keep their homes warm. It is funny that its response was, "We wouldn't be spending money on a regeneration project." Now, in the present day, they have found the money to build a €630 million building for themselves to work in but - this is the punch in the stomach for residents - they are now asking for €10 million to sustain the existing building that was built in the 1990s where people are being penalised. They are living in substandard homes and they have the audacity then to put people's rents up. Our fairytale has turned into a complete real-life nightmare for residents. Dublin City Council seems to have no accountability to anyone. If this was a private business, lots of questions would be asked about the finances and how they are being used. I do not see why an audit trail cannot be provided to the Government. Then it would also have nightmares about how public money is being spent.
Ms Gayle Cullen-Doyle:
I am a resident of Oliver Bond. My children are the fifth generation, and my mother is still living in my great grandmother's home there. Today, I am going to outline the urgent and ongoing issues faced by the residents in the Oliver Bond flats in Dublin 8. I will focus on the substandard living conditions, overcrowding, serious health impacts of damp and mould and the psychological toll of environmental neglect and community trauma. The purpose is to highlight the lived realities of residents and to call for immediate, co-ordinated action from decision-makers and policymakers.
Residents in Oliver Bond flats are experiencing continuous dampness and visible mould growth in their homes, poor ventilation and inadequate installation, structural deterioration of buildings and delayed or lack of maintenance response. These conditions are not isolated but general, which affects multiple households across the complex.
Overcrowding is a significant issue, with many families living in spaces that do not meet their needs. Three generations still live in our home. There is a lack of personal space and privacy. There is increased stress and tension within households. It is difficult for children to study or rest. There is wear and tear on an already decomposed housing. Overcrowding also increases the spread of illnesses, particularly in poorly ventilated environments.
The presence of damp and mould poses a serious risk to physical health due to respiratory conditions such as asthma and chronic coughing. In January 2024, Trinity College research found that residents in Oliver Bond flats are 2.4 times more likely to have asthma compared to the rest of Dublin 8. They are also prone to skin irritation and infection.
Due to environmental neglect and community trauma, there is an increased vulnerability among children, elderly residents and those with pre-existing conditions. Long-term exposure can lead to chronic health problems and increased pressure on the healthcare service. Residents are routinely exposed to distressing conditions, including unsafe free flow to five ungated exits, antisocial behaviour on their doorstep, drug-related activity and visible substance abuse and inadequate waste management and hygiene issues. These factors contribute to the ongoing stress and anxiety, fear for personal and family safety and the normalising of an unsafe and unhealthy environment. Children growing up in these conditions are particularly affected with long-term implications for their mental health and well-being caused by community trauma. I have lived experience of that.
Children in Oliver Bond are growing up in an environment that jeopardises their physical health, affects educational outcomes due to a lack of suitable study space and exposes them to trauma at a young age. Families report feeling trapped with limited options for relocation or improvement.
I will outline the impact of regeneration delays and the withdrawal of funding. Residents have experienced deep disappointment and distress following the withdrawal of the funding for phase 1 of the regeneration of Oliver Bond flats. The impacts include a significant decline in community spirit and increased feelings of hopelessness, sadness and depression among residents. There is a sense that the years of engagement, advocacy and co-operation have been disregarded. What is particularly distressing is the framing of the project as not representing value for money for residents. This raises fundamental concerns. The value of human life, health and dignity must be central to any assessment.
Residents wish to emphasise that our lives are valuable. Our community is worth investing in. The current conditions already represent a cost - social, health-related and economic - that will only increase if left unaddressed. It is also important to recognise that the current state of Oliver Bond flats would be 100 times worse if it were not for the ongoing efforts of residents groups. We have invested substantial time from all our lives, our energy and our care into maintaining our homes and community. All this effort has been voluntary and driven by dedication to dignity and continued safety. The withdrawal of the funding has left many feeling that their efforts have been undermined and that progress has been set back significantly.
The conditions in Oliver Bond represent a failure to provide safe, healthy, dignified housing. The impact on residents, particularly children, is severe and ongoing. Immediate and decisive action is required to address both the physical environment and broader social issues affecting the community. This is not just a housing issue; it is a public health issue, a child welfare issue and it is a matter of basic human dignity. We urge the Oireachtas to prioritise this issue in Oliver Bond flats and to work together with us, local authorities and health services to deliver a meaningful and lasting change in Oliver Bond. I thank members for their attention.
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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I thank the witnesses. I will make a proposal. We have our private session next week and we will make decisions then. I propose that we start engaging with the groups to organise a trip to go out and visit. Is that agreed? Agreed. We need to go out and visit straight away. I know there are a number of sites, but I have been taken aback by what has been said about how people feel. We have a responsibility as a committee. The clerk to the committee will try to organise a visit in the next couple of weeks.
Mr. Neil Maloney:
I am a lifelong resident of Pearse House in Dublin 2. Mould and damp has been a constant issue throughout my life living there. It was a battle for my mother and now it is mine.
The CAN report on the collective complaint put a light on just how bad the living conditions are in Pearse House and the fight residents had with Dublin City Council to address these issues, which was not productive.
It has given us a collective approach to fight for better housing. Homes are overcrowded. Toilets are small with barely enough room to shower. There is poor ventilation and black mould which, I was informed by a contractor from Dublin City Council, means that my home is uninhabitable. Windows are 25 years old. They do not hold the heat in and you can feel the draft. There are sewerage problems and continued rat and seagull infestation, which has been brought to the council’s attention on numerous occasions but nothing has been done. The bricks used to build the complex are no longer protective against the elements. Maintenance is poor with no report accountability.
We have been engaged with Dublin City Council to get the complex redeveloped. The building is listed and the proposal of bigger units was rejected because we would lose homes in the complex. These homes are not fit for purpose. People can protect the façade all they want but internally we should be able to future-proof homes so that they are fit for families to live and grow.
Area N, where I live, in Dublin Bay South, is in dire need of three- and four-bedroom homes. Our community has been decimated by gentrification and the focus on hotel and hostel development ahead of community housing needs. There has been very little engagement with any planning while all this is happening. We are second-class citizens when considering the vacant sites and what is being put in ahead of meeting the dire need of housing.
We identified a nearby vacant property that Dublin City Council could redevelop to provide larger homes for families living in overcrowded flats. In one case a unit that could have provided a vital link to the flats was ruled out because it had a basement and we were told that the council would not get the funding to infill a basement as part of any redevelopment. We were also told that any development would reduce the light in Pearse House yet a private developer could build on this site and that would not be considered. This site is potentially where the first phase of this deep retrofit will happen. A vacant block has been there for over ten years where an apartment block could have been built, going six-storeys high under their own guidelines, that would have provided the new and a link with the old flats so people could have stayed in the area. That was rejected because of a basement and a decision there would be no infilling. There has been no thought about residents. There is no thought about the community and the value of building communities. I find that very hard to understand. That is what this fight is all about. It is about protecting the homes and protecting the people who can actually live in this community and grow. I am fifth generation. My great grandparents came from the slums where Markievicz House is built now. They ended up moving into Pearse House and into the tenements. When they had that new hope and expectation, they were happy to live in the accommodation they got. Now, Pearse House and other developments around the city are replacing the slums; it has gone full circle. It is very hard to take when you are talking to people because it is falling on deaf ears – it is white noise to some of them; they do not want to know – but we live it every day. I am so passionate but it is so frustrating when I am trying to sell things to the community to find them rejected all of a sudden by people who do not even know where it is and do not see our day-to-day living. It is hard to build that community and get them back on board again.
A report was done in 2023-24. We were just talking earlier about some of the lip service with Dublin City Council coming out to do some repairs but it means nothing. These should have been done 20 or 30 years ago when there should have been an active, proper scheme in place to address these issues as they went on.
With facility overcrowding, the council can do whatever needs to be done but it will still not address the overcrowding. We will be sitting here in ten or 15 years with these new homes and we will still have the same problems and still have the same conversations. There is no future-proofing or looking at exactly what needs to be done. The protected status is fine for historians and architects to look at from the outside and lament but the view from inside out is much harder for tenants living in substandard conditions. That is a daily fight.
I found this very funny: we were looking for things to be done in Pearse House and we were fighting for it all the time. We have good engagement with Dublin City Council but it is very hard to get some stuff done. I believe a local councillor gave out about the state of the place from the outside looking in and then the railings were painted. We wondered “Who approved that?” because one councillor was giving out about it yet we have been giving out about the state of the place inside. It is a shame. Sometimes we actually feel ashamed walking into the flats because you look at all the lovely new buildings and the people who are working around the area look in and wonder how we live like that and how it is allowed to go like that. Again, as Ms Mulhall and Ms Cullen Doyle alluded to, if that was private accommodation, we would have an avenue and a structure to go to but we do not have that. Unfortunately, the Minister would not sit and meet us when we requested that. Come and visit – not only the committee members but also the Minister should come and see what people have to put up with and what they are living with day to day. We talk about “Strumpet City”; we are not that far away from it again.
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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We will go and visit. We will give that commitment. We will get the clerk to the committee to start organising contacts and put that in place over the next couple of weeks.
I thank Mr. Maloney. We will revert to our speaking rota and the first speaker is Deputy Séamus McGrath.
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Chair. I thank everyone for being here and, in particular, I thank Ms Mulhall, Ms Cullen Doyle and Mr. Maloney for their honesty about life and living in these flat complexes, which was quite grim to listen to, to be quite frank. I totally agree with the Cathaoirleach. A visit would paint a thousand words. It would give us an idea in the flesh if we saw it first hand. I certainly support that request.
The witnesses all described how difficult life is and the various issues around the condition of the places they live, including the poor ventilation, dampness, poor insulation, condensation, mould, respiratory issues and so on, rodents, seagull infestation and a litany of issues down to poor-standard accommodation.
I will start with Ms Mulhall on Dolphin House. She mentioned the works that were done and their serious flaws. Would she elaborate on that and give us a little more detail?
Ms Debbie Mulhall:
We were all excited about phase 1. I was one of the residents and people said I was one of the lucky ones but I do not know how lucky I am. There was only about 30% new build there and the rest of that 70% retrofit. I had gone back to work in 2019 and moved into the apartment at the end of 2019. Because of the work I do, residents come to me regularly and would tell me the taps were not working in the new places, or whatever. I felt a bit like Erin Brockovich because I was finding all this out and thinking that nobody was listening to us. I am sort of person who gets their evidence before going somewhere. The problem we always have is the turnover of staff in Dublin City Council. We have had at least eight to ten estate managers in my time working there and that is 12 years. What happens is the person is not giving the evidence over to the next person so we have to start at ground zero again, which is very hard for a person. The apartment I am living in at the moment is supposed to be BER 2, a high rating, but it is really cold. My gas bill for January and February was €400 but I am not unique in that. Again, there are two new people in Dublin City Council who seem to be on board with it and listening to the residents. The residents are absolutely delighted. We have the evidence; as we say, we have the receipts. The video footage is there of people’s homes. One man had to put a hole in his ceiling. The water that poured from the ceiling was unreal. There are lots of properties like that. In the case of the woman who lives upstairs from me her whole bathroom exploded – underneath the sink exploded. I remember the day because I had to go up and help her and gave her lots of my bedding that I use and towels. I told her the best thing to do was to contact the council and put in a claim. The council said it was not responsible for it and not liable for it.
These are new. If the council is not liable, who is liable for these problems?
As I said, we were all so happy to look at these homes being built but if you were to go into what we would call phase 1 of Dolphin House, it is quite shocking. We had a conversation earlier. The doors have had to be replaced numerous times at a cost of €70,000 or €80,000 at a time. That is our money. Fire exits had to be closed up. That again came out of our money. There is a playground that children cannot play in because the fire exits had to be closed up. The life we are living should be the dream, but, in actual fact, it is a nightmare we are living in.
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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That is staggering to listen to. All evening, we have been listening to the Department and Dublin City Council talk about the scale of the challenge and the work that is being done and so on. To hear that work that has been done presents huge issues and flaws is concerning. A lot of money has obviously been spent but we did not get value for money on the basis of the standard of what was done, according to what Ms Mulhall has said on behalf of the residents and what they are now dealing with as a result of those flawed jobs.
I will turn to Ms Cullen-Doyle, who is in Oliver Bond. The Department did say today that funding has not been withdrawn. I just say that. The representatives of the Department said they have gone back to Dublin City Council looking for revisions and so on. Other members were at the meeting longer than I was and will be able to explain further, but that is what the representatives of the Department said. Ms Cullen-Doyle went into some detail and mentioned the higher incidence of asthma, for example, in the area. Would she tell us a little more about the respiratory difficulties for children, in particular?
Ms Gayle Cullen-Doyle:
A doctor in Trinity College Dublin collaborated and worked with the Liberties Community Project. They went around and did the research. The findings were that people in Oliver Bond were 2.4 times more likely to have asthma than anyone else in Dublin 8. They did the research with all the local doctors who accommodate all the people in Dublin 8.
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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That is extraordinary.
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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The residents can feel that. They can see why. They are not questioning that. They believe that is-----
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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They know that is the case based on their own lived experience-----
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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-----of dampness, cold, mould, poor-quality air and so on.
Ms Gayle Cullen-Doyle:
I am fourth generation. I was born into overcrowded conditions. When I set up on my own, I had a baby and moved into a one-bedroom home with my husband. That was overcrowded. I have never had my own bedroom. At the moment, I have a 27-year-old in one room and a nine-year-old sharing a room with me and my husband. I have never experienced having a room of my own.
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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I do not want to ask about Ms Cullen-Doyle's individual case, but in terms of people applying for transfers and so on, and I note that Ms Mulhall is smiling, is that happening all the time?
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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Are people applying and looking for transfers?
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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Other people do not want it, but Ms Cullen-Doyle is saying-----
Ms Gayle Cullen-Doyle:
Other people do not want it, but people in Oliver Bond want homes there but cannot get them because they are too high up on the housing list. It make sense to eliminate the overcrowding by giving homes to the young adults who want them. That would help with some damp and mould.
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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The witnesses spoke about fifth generations, grandparents and all of that. They are proud residents of the flat complex.
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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They obviously want the flats to be of a high standard, a better standard.
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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Would the majority of people want to stay there if the standard was up to scratch?
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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They would not mind if they got better standards.
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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Ms Cullen-Doyle pays €800 per month.
Ms Gayle Cullen-Doyle:
Another neighbour, whose home is riddled with damp and mould, pays €1,200 per month with the new increases that have come in. Some of my friends pay that in mortgages. My friend in Ballyfermot has a mortgage for €650 per month. I pay €800 per month for an overcrowded home in Oliver Bond. It is shocking.
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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I will turn to Mr. Maloney from Pearse House. He was the only one who mentioned an infestation of rats and seagulls and so on. How bad is it?
Mr. Neil Maloney:
I will show the Deputy some of the pictures after the meeting. It has been on the rise. I live on the bottom floor and the bin store is right beside me. It is an open-air bin store. Dublin City Council, in its wisdom, leaves the bins outside the bin store on a Friday. We have spoken to the council about that and asked for them to be put back in. The seagulls are tearing apart the black bags in the bins and everything is going all over the place. That is then attracting rats, which are going into the gardens and the vacant properties where the small flats are. They are coming out of there and going into the flats. Everyone can see these things running around on a daily basis. Big rats are running around. Senator Andrews has got complaints about the issue. It is an ongoing battle for us. As I said, where these are, there are people walking by and having a look. There are a lot of tourists around the area. Looking in, I am sure they are thinking, "How do people live like that?" This is what we are expected to put up with.
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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Dare I ask, how does Mr. Maloney find the response of Dublin City Council when he makes complaints about rodents?
Mr. Neil Maloney:
If we make the complaints from the association, we get a response. I find that individuals do not get a quick response. If we do it as the association, we take responsibility and ring the council. Where I live, I cannot even open my bedroom windows at night when it is warm because I am afraid a rat would come in. We look straight out onto that. It is bad enough that we are in an overcrowded situation. My youngest daughter is ten. She is coming to a stage of life and cannot be in the same room as me. I have three boys, too. One of the boys is autistic and sleeps in the sitting room. There is no room for anybody.
When the Community Action Network, CAN, report was done, it highlighted E block, which always stood out for me. Twenty families lived in E block. There are only four three-bedroom homes in that block. That means the guts of 15 or 16 homes are overcrowded. That has never been addressed. That is only in one block, and there are 16 blocks.
Then there are the communal spaces where kids are supposed to play, with a rat infestation and the seagulls. Cars have been destroyed by the seagulls dirtying all over them. That is a constant battle. That is what we are expected to live around.
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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The witnesses all have similar issues. I absolutely understand. Some of them mentioned that previous generations came from the tenements and the slums and so on. One hundred years later, it is hard to envisage that we are dealing with similar issues. It makes one despair.
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the witnesses for being here and for their testimony. I acknowledge the huge amount of work that the residents and the organisation formerly known as the Community Action Network have done. It is worth reminding the committee that this phase of the campaign has gone on for 12 years. Residents have been campaigning for improvements for decades, but in its current phase, it started 12 years ago. In fact, it was 14 years ago when you look at the surveys that preceded the collective complaint. In the large flat complexes, so little has changed. In some senses, things have got worse.
Ms Cullen-Doyle took a number of us around Oliver Bond on Saturday, at our request. I have a couple of things to add. You think you have been in and out of everywhere, and then you see something that really shocks you. One of the families who Ms Cullen-Doyle took us to see is a family living in a 48 sq. m two-bedroom flat. That is approximately 527 sq. ft, for those of us who are of a certain vintage. Five people are living in the house. The parents are in one room. The other bedroom is barely the size of a double bed. There is a double bed, a tiny sliver of space and a single bed, and then storage. A 20-year-old woman and her 18-year-old sister share the double bed. The 14-year-old son, who has high-spectrum autism, is in the single bed. The toilets and showers are the smallest I have ever come across. They are approximately one quarter the size of a standard hotel toilet. I am trying to visualise it. This home was immaculate. This family has such pride. However, there was that level of overcrowding and then there was all of the damp. You have to see it for it to be impactful.
The reason I raise that is, although I know the witnesses are fed up with people talking about units, a lot of the conversation between ourselves, Dublin City Council and the Department in the previous session centred on what seems to be a disagreement. That session was robust and I encourage the witnesses to look at it and send the committee their reflections on what they hear because we would be really interested. We will talk about Oliver Bond House for a second and then we will come to Pearse House. Residents and the council spent two and a half years negotiating a proposal, which is now with the Department, to amalgamate two homes into one or three homes into two to create adequate space for single people, couples and families with children within the flat complex. The Department is saying that is not what it wants. It wants to keep the same number of units and to refurbish them but to reduce the number of people living in them.
What I am interested in hearing from the witnesses is not so much the numbers, because we got all of that earlier. As residents who are living in these flats, particularly those at the Oliver Bond complex and Pearse House, what has been their experience of the consultation period? What was the impact on them and on the community when the projects were knocked back? The original proposal for Pearse House was knocked back in April last year. A revised proposal was recently approved. What are the consequences of going with the Department's preferred option, which is to have a large number of studios for single people and one-bedroom units for couples without children and not to have adequate space for families with children? From the community's point of view, what would it mean if the Department were to get its way? Will Ms Cullen-Doyle and Mr. Maloney talk us through their experience of that consultation? Will Mr. Maloney tell us about the proposal being knocked back before the revised and updated proposal was approved? What are the witnesses' views on the proposals the Department is putting on the table for the well-being of the community?
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Yes, exactly.
Ms Gayle Cullen-Doyle:
It was absolutely devastating for the community. We really were not expecting it. We spent many years keeping the faith and holding onto hope. People in the community were constantly telling us we were wasting our time. We had to put a lot of time and energy into convincing people that this was going to happen. We were at that for a number of years. For this to then happen was like somebody sticking a knife through my heart or someone in the community dying. It was devastating. Those in the Department do not live the lives we live. It is just horrendous. People were excited. Children were telling me that they could not wait to have a bath in a bigger bathroom. They were telling me they wanted sit around a table having dinner together or to have somewhere to do their homework. It is absolutely devastating.
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Ms Cullen-Doyle has a full-time job and is a working mother with a partner. If she does not mind, will she give us a sense of the amount of time she and the other members of the community put into that ongoing dialogue with the council? The council did not just pluck a plan out of nowhere. It was the result of hundreds and hundreds of hours of engagement with the local community over two and a half years.
Ms Gayle Cullen-Doyle:
As a residents group, we have monthly meetings. As the regeneration forum, we have been meeting monthly over the past four to five years. Every quarter, there is a meeting about regeneration. The monthly meetings are about the here and now, trying to put a plaster on problems. Emergency meetings are also called and we have to give up work, get childcare and sort out our lives. The Government does not seem to understand that, barring the residents, everyone sitting around that table gets paid to be there. They do not care whether meetings get cancelled or rescheduled but that has an impact on residents. You want to be there because you have put your heart and soul into this. This regeneration forum has been going on for four or five years but I have been in the residents group for over 25 years, as have some other residents. This is not just about the regeneration. This has involved constant fighting from my great-granny to my granny to my mother and to me. We have put our hearts and souls into this all of our lives and this happens just as we thought we were over the line. I know the funding is not gone but the Department is not agreeing to bring the homes up to standard. They are agreeing this because vulnerable people are being affected by the housing crisis. We did not cause the crisis so we should not have to get these people out of it. We have our own crisis. We are in the complex, which is affected by damp, mould and overcrowding. We need to sort out our own crisis and let the Government sort out the rest of the housing crisis.
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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To tie into that, Mr. Maloney has gone through the experience of having a proposal knocked back that was not dissimilar to that for the Oliver Bond complex. It then took a further year to get a revised proposal, which involves a larger number of units but for smaller numbers of residents. As somebody who has lived there, what does he think the impact of that change will be on the community? Will fewer families with children be able to live there? What is his sense of what has been agreed?
Mr. Neil Maloney:
What has been agreed is not going to change anything in terms of the overcrowding. In fairness to the council, it sees the value in making homes bigger. When it was proposed that this was going to happen but we were then informed that it was being taken away and that Government was not going to fund it because of the loss of units and additionality, it drove me mad. I actually took time to myself for two weeks because I was absolutely sick. We have only been doing this since 2011 but I just wondered what we were at and whether anyone was actually listening. My experience was definitely the same as Ms Cullen-Doyle described. People would tell you they told you it would not happen because they do believe they have been forgotten and that nothing will change.
It was hard for us to build back up again but people thought that, with the deep retrofit that was proposed, people would be able to get a home in their own right. I am talking about young adults living at home being able to access a home through their own application. We have now been told that is not going to happen. Dublin City Council's proposal is that, if someone is in a two-bedroom unit and living with an adult and child, who have their own application, that application will not be considered. The council will go by the main application, in this case, the mother and father's application. They will be housed for their needs and be put in a one-bedroom unit but their adult child and grandchild will have to go with them, which leaves everyone in an even worse situation. That does not solve anything. It causes more hassle. People will be driven into homelessness and to go to whatever lengths they have to.
We hoped this would be a catalyst for all protected structures around the city. We had a vision for bigger homes. I still believe that should happen, regardless of what the Department says. A lot of people do not know whether they will ever get out of that situation. They do not know whether their own kids will be able to access a home. It is just ridiculous. On the one hand, I accept that we need investment. That was always needed. However, there is no future-proofing and no commitment to saving our community. Some people will just end up moving out and never coming back, not by choice but because of the way things have been presented to us. That is another impact on our community, which is a very tight-knit community. I do not know whether the Department has an appetite to address that. The likes of St. Andrew's Court is sitting there and not being built on. People could have been put in there as part of the decanting process. There could have been more homes for them there. Additionality should always be provided within the community. There are enough vacant sites for that to happen and to give people a hope of living in their own community. That just does not seem to be on the Government's agenda. That is a failure on its part. It is not engaging with us at all.
Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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I apologise for being a bit late but I have been watching on the monitor.
I was over on the other side of Leinster House, in the Dáil. I do not have a lot to add because what has been described is such a damning indictment of the Government and the local authority's failure of these communities. It is shameful. This has more or less been said and we asked the officials this question when they were in earlier. Is it that they are just not listening to the communities and that they are playing a numbers game with very high-level figures? Is it as simple as that? Is it that there is no listening to people and communities?
Ms Debbie Mulhall:
I have always said that if you are doing a project, you should get experts in. The experts are the residents. We have always engaged more than 100% because we want what is best for our community. We are the constant. We are always there. We always want what is best for our community, the same as anyone else does no matter where they live, whether it is in a house, an apartment or whatever else. Everybody wants what is best for themselves and the community around them and to keep it sustainable.
I find that sometimes we are being listened to but not being heard. That is so annoying because it is like "Groundhog Day", repeating yourself over and over and then asking why we are doing this. The reason we are doing it is that we are passionate about our communities. We are really passionate about where we live. I have grandchildren now. I had a lovely childhood in Dolphin House. I want my grandchildren in years to come to look back and say they had a good childhood in Dolphin House. That is not going to happen unless there is collaboration, which is my favourite word of all time. We all need to work together. We need to see that we need each other. Dublin City Council cannot work without us and we cannot work without it. However, we have always been the givers. It is about collaboration and working together.
I am so saddened. We have a girl who works for us. We are not mentioning names. She is a health worker in one of four flats left in a derelict block. At the weekend, she twice came down to find human faeces on her stairs. As a heath worker, this is horrendous for her mental health and I know that because she told me. She is not unique in that. We have asked Dublin City Council to do a simple thing, which is put up a gate so that will stop. There is no chance of her being moved for a while, but the council is not listening to us. There are simple solutions that would stop these problems but our voices just seem to be falling on deaf ears. That is a very hard thing to understand as you are going along every day.
Ms Gayle Cullen-Doyle:
We had the Taoiseach visit about five years ago and we also had the previous Minister come out. With all due respect, I know people want to visit but I would like people to visit on the grounds that something is going to happen. We had two visits already and nothing has come from them. I suggest that visits should be for action, not for another publicity stunt or an opportunity to say "We have done it; we went there." Members need to see the reality of what we are living in.
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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I can give Ms Cullen-Doyle a guarantee. All the members work together closely on this committee in everything we do to try to make change. Our visit will be to visit you and your houses. There will not be a camera man or anything like that. It will be a visit to see what has been described here. Deputy McGrath and I are members of a Government party and we want to be able to help as well. I can give that guarantee on behalf of every member of this committee. We have a good collective. We differ on various issues but we work collectively to make a difference. I will give that commitment. I cannot give any guarantees but I can say that we will work collectively to apply pressure, whether we have to write to the Minister or write to the Department. After our visit, we will do a mini report to identify the issues we see.
Ms Una Lowry:
In relation to consultation, I sit on three regeneration structures in the south city area. From my point of view and that of the residents and tenants, they have been consulted to death. We want real, meaningful engagement. We stood outside blocks during the Covid pandemic and tried to sell master plans to residents. We have been there at night-time. There have been block meetings with all the residents here. We have done all that. We want real, meaningful engagement.
In 2023, we set up a community of practice in Dublin 8. That was through conversations with staff and residents working and living in some of the projects. We found that all of the regeneration projects are looked at in silos. There were no conversations around best practice, shared experience or learning. As Ms Mulhall said, the experts are the residents because they are there constantly. We are losing institutional memory constantly. Dublin City Council staff move on and we have to start all over again. It is soul-destroying.
From the community of practice point of view, it is about getting everyone into a room to have a meaningful dialogue. Having those conversations has been really good and we are still here today. In the south city, our experience goes back to talking about the projects. In St. Michael's Estate the sod was turned recently. When it is eventually finished it will have been a minimum of 29 years from the time it started. In Dolphin House, it will be a minimum of 27 years. In 2025, we estimated it would be nine years just for phase 1. Where is phase 1 now? I am not sure what the estimates are for Pearse House. That is not part of our community of practice yet, but we are working on it. That is about getting everybody into a room and having dialogue. The Community Action Network has facilitated that dialogue for us. Getting all of those actors into a room and starting to share all those experiences is so important.
Mr. Neil Maloney:
Pearse House was a fantastic place to live and grow up. It was a hive of activity, like any inner city complex. We probably did not know, growing up, the conditions we were living in. Expectations have grown but the flats were built for families. Fundamentally, they were built for families and that has been lost on the Government and the council in terms of what their function was. When I was a kid, every flat complex we went to, whether it was on Sheriff Street or up in Ms Cullen-Doyle's community, was a hive of activity. Now there is nothing there. That life for kids does not happen any more. The flats are gone so bad that I always ask myself how far do we have to let things go in order for something to be done? Look at how bad Fatima Mansions became in order for something to be done. We are living through that now in terms of the way the housing is, the drug dealing, the antisocial behaviour and the way we are supposed to live. It needs to be addressed.
Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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These areas are not in my direct constituency, although I have been around Pearse House and Dolphin House. I do not know Oliver Bond House so well, actually, but I have had some interaction with the residents there. Even out our way, we had a massive fight to get something done with the Mounttown flats, which were essentially a mini Ballymun. It took years and years. We did eventually get there. The maisonettes are the last of them and they are a huge problem. The "upsie downsies" is what we call them. People are in ridiculous, overcrowded conditions. We are trying to get those maisonettes regenerated.
An important point was made about the failure to recognise the importance of families. There has been a big emphasis on one- and two-bedroom units, generally speaking, by developers and the councils. That does not recognise families and community networks as being important and it is because people are playing a numbers game. The witnesses seem to be saying that, and it is certainly something we are seeing. Councils and the Government have to recognise that communities are important, as are family networks, and cohesion in communities in that regard is important. They should not just see this in terms of numbers, which they often do.
Chris Andrews (Sinn Fein)
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It is hard to know where to start. First, I acknowledge the work, effort, energy and commitment the witnesses have shown to their community over decades. It is incredible, especially when they are being treated as second-class citizens, as Mr. Maloney said. It is hugely impressive. One of the witnesses said that this is not a housing crisis but, rather, a home and community crisis. That struck me. The Irish Times wrote an article saying that the State has a moral obligation to all flats. That is exactly the situation. Oliver Bond, Pearse House and Mercer House flats, as well as those on Vincent Street, have all been neglected. Residents have been allowed to live in unacceptable conditions. It is disrespectful.
An indication that these residents are being treated like second-class citizens is that the Minister will not even meet them. That is remarkable. The Minister has not met residents of the Oliver Bond or Pearse House flats, nor he has not met the residents down at the Irish Glass Bottle site and the development there. Many have said to me that the Minister, Deputy James Browne, is the invisible housing Minister. Unfortunately, that is how residents feel because the Government and the Minister for housing are not willing to meet residents. A visit by this committee would be welcome. Before the past election, in the height of cynicism, a regeneration plan was committed to by the then Minister for housing, Deputy O’Brien. Mere months after that election, however, that commitment was withdrawn from the Pearse House flats. That was devastating, and we can read the testimony of residents in that regard. It was devastating for residents, especially given the work, commitment, heart and soul they put in to improving their community. It was a kick. Like Ms Cullen said, it was a knife through the heart.
Parallel to all of this is the fact that the council and the Government can find €581 million to move the civic offices up to Camden Yard on Kevin Street. That is all done within a number of months, yet residents are left to rot in conditions like those in Strumpet City. The financial restrictions the Government put on Dublin City Council have effectively turned Dublin City Council into a slum landlord where tenants have no redress to the tenancies board or an appeals system. It is completely unacceptable.
There is also the issue of rent hikes. These rent hikes will put people into huge debt. Many residents cannot afford them. They already have to do up and maintain their flats because the council will not do it, and then the rent is being increased on top of that. The likes of Oliver Bond, Pearse House and Mercer House flats, as well as many other developments, should each have their own dedicated maintenance crew on site to deal with issues. Those numbers of properties and homes need commitment and a maintenance crew designated to them.
The witnesses mentioned working with residents. I know Mr. Maloney has met residents, as have Ms Cullen-Doyle and Ms Mulhall. The residents must be losing confidence. It must be pretty devastating for the witnesses to have to inform them that these projects are not happening after all. How is that relationship with residents at the moment? It was mentioned that this is not just a housing crisis, but a community crisis. Many families with children with disabilities and autism are struggling to keep everything together. How does that work in terms of getting out of those conditions? Do the witnesses see any hope for their community?
Mr. Neil Maloney:
When we were rejected in April, people were destroyed. The previous Christmas, people had told us how they were going to invest in their homes. They thought a roadmap and everything was in place. One girl in particular came to me roaring and crying. She was devastated. All I could do was put my arms around her. I felt like I had built people’s expectations up. I just had no answers for her. That is when I went into myself for a couple of weeks to regroup and start to focus on that because it is hard at times. People had so much hope that there was going to be something there for them, such as bigger homes and a place where they could live and grow. As Ms Cullen said – I could not have put it any better – it was like a knife through the heart for that to be taken away. It was another attack on our community.
We are only looking to secure better homes for people that are sustainable and provide a future for everyone. The community we come from might be affluent and one of the richest in Europe because of where we are based, but that does not extend to all of us. I am involved with underage football at Cambridge FC and I look at some of those kids who play for the club. I see them out and about. They will not be able to buy in our area. Therefore, the only opportunity they will ever have is social homes. The focus needs to go back onto that so that we have bigger homes and are able to reproduce the homes and get them back out into proper housing stock.
Many homes are under-occupied, and that issue is not being addressed. There are no other options for those people to move into, which would allow them to give up their current home and give it to a family. I am absolutely baffled by some policies and the fact that no one looks into this. If someone gets a house or moves into a bigger home from an overcrowded situation, it is like they have won the lotto. I am happy for everyone who gains that. When my time comes, I will be happy. It could be a pipedream, however, because there is absolutely nothing there at the moment.
I cannot understand why this is not being future-proofed and why we are not going back to what this is all fundamentally about – families. They build communities. When we talk about antisocial behaviour and this, that and the other - I know it has escalated in another direction – families were able to control all of that in the past. People got behind their community. They had a vested interest in it. I always believed that the proposal for Pearse House would have changed people’s mindsets to invest more in their community and get behind it all, but that has been dashed by a Minister, as the Senator said, who is like The Scarlet Pimpernel. I have written to him on numerous occasions and reached out through various avenues, but I still have received nothing back. The Minister and civil servants probably do not want to know because they are not living it. That is a shame on this Government. We would like to put forward as a motion that we meet the Minister.
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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I am the Chair of this committee and non-partisan, but I am also a member of a Government party.
We will be going out to meet them. I am saying that here publicly. We will do that in the next-----
Chris Andrews (Sinn Fein)
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The Minister needs to meet them as well.
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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We have no remit over the Minister. We are going out as a committee. We have agreed, cross-party, to go out. I am saying that publicly and we will do it.
Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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It might not hurt to write to the Minister.
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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We can do that. We can meet, put together proposals and formulate a letter or a submit a report from this committee to the Minister and the Department.
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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Ms Cullen-Doyle has 30 seconds. I am conscious of time.
Ms Gayle Cullen-Doyle:
When I was growing up in the nineties, I remember that my ma was fighting for the regeneration of Oliver Bond before all these problems came about. I remember the excitement. It was just unreal. As I said, it was like Funderland coming to the flats, swinging out of JCBs and what have you. It was brilliant. We were jumping off balconies onto sand. It was like we won the lotto. I get they way the kids of Oliver Bond have been feeling in getting ready and preparing for this. Now, how are we supposed to go back and tell the kids that they are not getting it any more? Hopefully, we are able to overturn something and give them what they deserved and what was promised to them. I have been on each side of the feeling of something happening to your home.
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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Does Ms Forrestal want to come in with a comment?
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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I will bring Ms Forrestal in. I just want to get members for questions. Deputy Devine is indicating.
Máire Devine (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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I was with the nurses earlier, so I am sorry for the late arrival. I know Dolphin House, Oliver Bond, etc. The Dublin 8 area is the Brooklyn of Ireland. That is what it is sold as. This is the Brooklyn of Ireland. I am holding two pictures of water damage, damp and mould in flats. This is what I am dealing with as a Deputy in my constituency. These pictures are from Dolphin House. I have never seen anything like that. That is probably one of the worst. I would show members and witnesses the toilet, but it makes me sick to look at it.
I welcome all the witnesses. They do not fecking deserve any of you. They do not deserve you. They marched you up to the hill, back down again and dropped you like a hot snot. A few years ago, Mr. Doran brought out Greentown or Redtown. I cannot remember which it was, but four words out of that study loddged in my brain, "the corruption of childhood". The Government is complicit in non-compliance with the UNCRC. I raise the corruption of childhood. I often say to follow a child's journey, coming from whatever is going on inside the flat. In lots of places, it could be addiction, fear, mental ill-health or whatever. Take the child out on the way to school, close the door behind them. Go down the balcony and down the stairs and what do they see, find or experience? Then they get down to the bottom. In some cases, there is a supermarket queue for drug dealing. That has never been addressed. It is almost like it is a deliberate policy to keep it in certain areas, because, as the man said in the sex shop on James's Street when I told him to get the naked woman out of the window because it was unauthorised, "They don't deserve anything less." That is what the decision on Oliver Bond is telling people. It is saying them they are are not worth it and they deserve what they have.
There is Oliver Bond and Dolphin House. St. Michael's took 21 years and seven housing Ministers before a sod was turned. There are the Seagull House and Emmet Buildings and Tyrone Place. This is really heavy stuff. The Government's own Housing Commission suggested a couple of years ago that, as landlords, DCC or the Department should be taken to task by the Residential Tenancies Board. Do the witnesses think that would have made any difference? They are really at a loss in maintenance for this awful stuff which needs to be completely gutted. Do they think it would have made any difference to recommendations and decisions? Otherwise they had to take it to the European court. That was a recommendation by the Government itself.
The attacks on social cohesion are all mixed up with this. It is about bricks and mortar and decent conditions of living but it is also about the whole community. The Government does not get that flat complexes and housing estates have their own special unique community where human interaction and help and assistance and care and empathy actually exists. That seems to be able to be thrown by the water. I raise the severe funding for the maintenance. We could go on and on, but basically, what do the witnesses want to get the Minister to say? I know we have an idea of a multi-annual budget and staffing and the regeneration in its own silo. Is the answer to it to take it away from being dependent on housing numbers, even though the housing numbers here actually make sense? Whatever it is the witnesses can enlighten me on, I will fight for it. We are meeting the Minister next week on the Dublin 8 regeneration.
Mr. Peter Dorman:
I will come in and then Ms Forrestal can add something about the cohesion in the communities. In terms of the committee and its job being about policy, we try to look at some very simple ones policy decisions and then going up to some more difficult ones. One is to remind the committee that the State is in violation of an international treaty. That is serious; that is not nothing. Therefore, when it comes to allocating resources or making policy, putting that right should be a priority. That should come over decisions about using the opportunity of regeneration going on to house and have single units. The committee found that it was the rights of the family that were at the heart of the complaint. With regard to those kinds of decisions about numbers and all that stuff and the detail, the priority should be, and the budget should be. spent on if rights are being compromised because children are suffering from ill-health because of the damp and mould. That should come before other things. That is the first thing.
The second thing is that simple policies like, for example, the policy within local authorities, including Dublin, is that the damage caused by mould, condensation - some of the guys here were showing photographs earlier of the damage to property - according to the tenant handbook, their sole responsibility, even though, no matter what they do, they cannot solve it. The special policy committee actually voted in 2017 to reverse that policy but it appeared in the next issue of the handbook. The Government could simply give an executive order to all of the local authorities to change that if it is in their handbooks because it is not fair. There are very simple policy measures like that.
Then there is the structural issue about the connection between the Government and the local authority. Ms Forrestal will pick up on that and the stuff about home and social cohesion?
Ms Cecilia Forrestal:
There are two points. The violation, as cited by the Council of Europe, had to do with the economic, legal and social protection of children and families. In order for children and families to be protected, according to Article 16 of the charter, they had to have adequate housing. That is where the housing conditions that we hear about now are violations, not just in relation to housing conditions, but in relation to the protection of children and families. Four times the Council of Europe has found Ireland to be in violation. It is a serious matter that we are not addressing it.
We are not addressing it because there is no infrastructure whatsoever for local authority tenants and residents to join and have a voice. In the absence of any kind of infrastructure - the Deputy has listened today - individuals within Dolphin House, Oliver Bond or Pearse House have to deal with the council one by one. They are lucky enough in Dolphin House and Oliver Bond to have residents' associations that are robust and can act on their behalf and collectivise some of their issues. Pearse House does not have that infrastructure. Equally, each community then has to do it in silos.
There is no learning. There is no joining up. There is a total waste of money and everyone’s energy. The committee has heard what people put by way of their own lives into the activism, passion, commitment and solidarity that they have in their areas, but there is no way of bringing that together in any meaningful way. Therefore, they have no voice at a national level.
Things happen, and standards are set down for housing. For example, people who live in private rented housing have to have dryers and places for their clothes to be hung, but people living in local authority housing do not have the same standards. The reason they do not have the same standards is most likely that they were forgotten about. We place a bigger value on ownership, where money is exchanged, and we place a low value on social housing.
There is no way of collectivising the issue. One of our asks has been that we begin to look at the infrastructure that exists. The community of practice that Ms Lowry talked about brought together six regeneration areas, and Deputy Devine, Deputy Ó Snodaigh and some of the other members are familiar with it. They brought together six communities to see if we could sit down together and learn to work together with Dublin City Council and the Department of housing. We had all of the relevant people present. We would like to enlarge that so we create some kind of effective system for collaboration, but it has nowhere to link into, even within Dublin City Council, for example.
At one stage, in a few of these areas, we counted something like 3,500 new homes that were being talked about. They are huge social housing developments, yet nobody seems to know who is in charge of them. Is it possible for this committee, in one of its private sessions, to consider asking Dublin City Council or the Minister to appoint a director of regeneration, with some dedicated staff, so these people do not end up dealing with Tom, Dick and Harry, because they change every two minutes? Nobody has any institutional memory, and they come out with a new plan as if nothing has happened before. I am sure that if we were here all night, the committee members could hear story after story about how that happens.
There is a need to build some kind of link. Our link was back into the Oireachtas in the request to have two sessions here on a yearly basis. We are really asking for some of the infrastructure for that. That was one point I wanted to make. It would go some way towards making sure there is accountability and that the violations would be addressed.
The second point has to do with the concept of home. Members have heard people talk in the committee about home. In the very early days, when we were working in Dolphin House, we had Professor Lorna Fox O'Mahony over from the University of Durham. She has done Trojan work on the legal definition of home, which committee members have heard reflected here. It is absent so much from the discourse about housing. When we hear people who live in these places, they will talk about home, but when we hear the dominant narrative, it is about housing, units and everything else.
I want to amplify that there is a relationship between the person and the property. Homes matter to the people who live in them. Homes are the foundation of our lives. They are the weave that allows our health and well-being, child development and an opportunity for social, economic or cultural aspects to happen. The structure provides a place for the experience of home. It shelters, supports and sustains the people who live in it. This is all part of the legal definition of home. Home creates a sense of belonging, as we have heard, and a sense of community, continuity, stability, solidarity, identity and esteem. Home has an emotional connection, and members have heard the pride, the memories and the stories. They tell us who we are, and they are the basis for the relationships of children into the future. We really need to think about changing the way we look at these issues and, fundamentally, make policy decisions not about buildings but about the people who live in them. That is the point we really want to have bedded down. It has a legal basis.
Paula Butterly (Louth, Fine Gael)
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I apologise that I was late. I do not really have a question because I missed the first part of the meeting. It is very interesting to hear the legal definition of home, and I think it is exactly the policy that we should be looking at. I am not overly familiar with Oliver Bond House or that area because my constituency is County Louth. However, I am a bit perplexed about the conditions. I took a sneak peek, and I do not want to see the photographs again. It is quite horrific. Where homes are provided, there is the right to maintain them, and I believe that is a right that the Government and the local council are responsible for. People have the right to a safe roof and a safe home. It would be nice to explore further a policy in relation to how we define this, using the legal definition for home.
I know that areas in Drogheda and Dundalk are suffering on many scales. I have been calling for the Greentown project to be piloted in Drogheda to bring in that sense of a link from your home to your community, and on to your environment and your schooling.
I do not really have questions for the witnesses. I would just like to acknowledge that there is something very wrong with the policy at the moment.
Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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Go raibh maith agaibh. I offer special thanks to the residents. They are going on a journey that none of us has gone on. We have been there sometimes on the development boards, regeneration boards or whatever they are called nowadays, but we do not have the lived experience of being brought up the hill and let down again and again. I know Ms Mulhall from the many times we have been told that phase 1B would start or not start, that the long block would be pulled down or not pulled down, and that the master plan would be there, and all of that. I am on the outside, whereas the witnesses have the lived experience.
For example, Ms Cullen has residents coming to her morning, noon and night, and she is trying to explain the time and effort involved during the meetings. It is more than the meetings, however. Every resident is stopping her to talk about it, and she is trying to build up their confidence, which is then dashed. People will turn on you and say it is a waste of time, but Ms Cullen will be expected, the next time the council or the State goes to the next phase or tries to re-engage, to again try to bring the community back on board. Communities are let down. They do not want to be brought up that hill again and be let down.
I remember when Dolphin House started, everybody said it was brilliant, and that it would roll from there. I remember asking a silly question, perhaps, from my point of view, which was why we did not have phases 1A, 1B, 2, 3 and 4 all before us so the builder who was on the site could tender for those. Maybe we would not want that builder but this was before he had even started. However, the logic was that we would have to go to tender, so there would be a building site, the site would be cleared, and we would start again on the next phase and then the next phase. We know from Dolphin House, in particular, how one phase will be done, and it then stops. That is one of the dangers.
I do not know how the witnesses manage to deal with that frustration. I wish them luck. I thank those who, over the years, have allowed me to see the conditions. Deputy Butterly said she does not want to see them again. I do not have pictures as bad as those that Deputy Devine has, but I have copies, if people want to look at them. We visited just two flats at the weekend, and we will visit more. I took a few photographs, with the permission of the residents, which show the little hairy white moulds or growths that are coming out of them. The residents are told by one set of people not to touch them and by others to clean them, so they do not know what to do.
They are damned if they do and damned if they do not. The problem is that if they clean it, it comes back. It is heartbreaking. If they paint it, it comes back. Mould is only a reflection of how damp the flats are, and that is only one symptom. Mr. Maloney was quite open about the rats, the seagulls and the general rundown condition. The council is not going to spend a huge amount of money on something it intends to regenerate or repurpose. How do the guests manage to motivate themselves again when they get a kickback like that?
Ms Gayle Cullen-Doyle:
Somebody has to try to keep the faith and keep it going. I get support by going to therapy. Therapy is what helps me, and that helps me to drive the community. If I did not have that experience with therapy, I would probably just lie down and let the authorities walk all over us. We cannot do that. Somebody has to fight the fight.
Ms Una Lowry:
I am the chair of Dolphin House Community Development Association, as well as wearing all the other hats. It is about trying to hold the "meanwhile" place for everybody. I refer to the social regeneration that comes with physical regeneration. The social cost of the homes not being delivered is huge for people. Dolphin House Community Development Association is trying to hold the space and take the little wins. We have a playground at Dolphin House with a community garden. We are coming up to the first anniversary and everybody is so proud. The children are out playing on the pitch, still in their socks, a year later. They do not put their shoes on because they want to keep it. Every time I go there, it lifts my heart. I am sure it also raises the residents’ hearts. I do the work and go to meetings at night-time and I am not there on an ongoing basis, but I realise the social cost needs to be considered.
At the moment, we have a small family support project at Dolphin House. We are scraping the money together. We got half of it from one agency and we are trying to get the other half from another. We could not get anybody to take the job because we do not have enough money. We have it only for a short time. Families are crying out for the support. It is constantly a case of grind and asking how we can keep going.
I am chair of the association and not a resident but it is a matter of ten steps forward and a couple of steps back, and then you go again. At every meeting, you are waiting for the booby traps. It has been a very difficult space, but the meanwhile space is very important, as is trying to get some sort of funding in there while we are waiting in the long term for the physical regeneration.
Ms Gayle Cullen-Doyle:
I want to say something on a positive note. Not everybody wants to get involved in a residents’ group because they think it is old school and that you are involved to do the policing work. Therefore, we do not call the groups residents’ committees anymore. They are residents' groups and we try to deal with DCC on housing issues. The community section in DCC is doing terrific work after years of neglect of our community. In the last two or three years, we have been thriving in our relationships with the council. We are hosting many community events, summer events. Just recently, we had 30 adults in the Oliver Bond area Garda vetted in respect of child protection and we are doing a summer project this year. That is one small thing to look forward to, but the people still have to go back to their homes after the trips. There needs to be investment not only in the social side but in it all.
Mr. Neil Maloney:
What motivates me are what are sometimes the small wins. We are not only about housing as we have been hosting events for a long time. We got that going again. When we were kids, there were always events at Pearse House. Whether it was at Hallowe'en or Easter, there was always a summer project. It was about trying to bring life back into the community again.
Covid was a big thing for us. It was brilliant. I say that as somebody who worked in the health service on the front line. I know how bad it was, but it actually gave me great relief to come away from the front line and help in the community. We organised a 5 km walk for Darkness into Light. I walked around, brought people down off balconies and got people engaged, adhering to social distance guidelines, of course. We could tap into the community again and that was a help in trying to bring about regeneration.
If you do not look after the community and stand back, there are consequences. If you are not willing to do what is required, no one else will do it. I understand the position when dealing with certain circles, because I am in the health service and am a union official. I know how slow and drawn-out things can be. This is very frustrating and other people do not always get that. It has been hard trying to bring people along and get them to understand the process and the way things go. It is a matter of the little wins. It is about people moving out of their mother and father's home and getting a one-bedroom flat for themselves. That is the start of their journey. That, for me, is everything. That is what community is about.
It is about the running club that has started in our area, addressing people's mental health. In this regard, I see the wider community coming together. There is an open day in June for a dementia initiative. These are little things that were probably slow in coming to our community, because we are probably forgotten and broken, whereas other communities would have had them. There is also the girls’ community. We are starting to get these little wins and things are starting to grow, but the expectation regarding the homes is a real issue that needs to be addressed. What we are trying to do is help the children coming up so they will invest in the community in the same way we do. You want to set that example. I remember the work done by the women of our area, some of them stalwarts and brilliant people. I found myself asking where the next generation was and then realising I was among them and needed to start making something happen. I look at my own kids and the groups they are in, and also the great work the youth services do, and I think we should be expanding on this. We should be making this community much better and providing outlets.
There is a pitch in the middle of Pearse House. That was our San Siro. Brian O'Rourke used to walk along and he was like Jack Charlton. We played for the complex. That was our thing and I want that back for people. I want the kids to have a sense of community and pride in where they are from. I want them to stand up and say they are from the flats and are better than what people think. There is a big expectation. There was a limitation on us growing up but in my eyes that is gone because some fantastic people have come from the complexes who have outgrown the limiting expectations placed on them. That is where my enjoyment of it all comes from.
I served my time as an electrician. I loved it but did not know what my niche in life was until I started getting into all the community work. The fulfilment and enjoyment are brilliant because you see other people grow and progress. That is what it is about and that is why I fight for my community. It is hard at times, but that is why I do it.
Ms Debbie Mulhall:
As I said earlier, my grandmother was born in 1906 and was an amazing woman. She instilled my values in me. When I started going out dancing, you were not allowed to wear high heels because you were not to upset your neighbours. That was instilled in me. At 12 years of age, because my grandmother was so religious, I had to collect 20 pence coins every week for the local nun for the tenants’ association. That was to bring the children out into the community in the summertime.
For me, community work is genuinely a vocation. It is definitely not for the money; I can assure you of that. I have been on the same wage for the last 12 years. For me, it is about my children and grandchildren and being able to show people that we can change things. Even over the last few weeks, when trying to talk to people about the rent hikes, they were giving out behind closed doors. I was saying to them that they had to come out, because if they did not, they would not change anything. All we are doing by sitting behind the door moaning is annoying each other.
Come out and fight the good fight because that is the only way that we will get things done as a community.
I just want to say one thing to Chris. He spoke earlier on about Dublin City Council and us doing our maintenance ourselves. We would love nothing better than to do our maintenance ourselves but if we do it and something happens, we are in desperate trouble. We are in a catch-22. We just have to wait until Dublin City Council comes in and does our maintenance. We cannot do it ourselves.
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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I have a few comments. Home and community is what this is about. I come from rural north Longford, far away from inner-city Dublin, but no matter where you go in the country, it is about community, family and home. I can feel that coming from the witnesses and the pride they have in where they live, and I look forward to visiting in the next couple of weeks.
I have a note written down about community support from the local authority in the witnesses' areas. It should have been there before now, but I am glad that there is good engagement with that section in Dublin City Council with regard to that and that funding is available for projects, such as the pitch that one of the witnesses spoke about earlier. That should be available for those facilities at all of those locations.
I come from Longford, and we have residents groups in nearly social housing estate in the county. We provide grant funding for lawnmowers, etc., for the groups to maintain the estates.
In read in Mr. Doran's introductory statement about a "expanded community of practice in local areas", so there is the basis of something there that just needs to be replicated across every flat complex.
Ms Una Lowry:
We will open it up to more groups. When we started it was in Dublin 8. I was sitting on a couple structures, and they were invited in. We knew of Gayle in Oliver Bond, and they came in. It is a matter of Pearse House joining and looking to see who else wants to join so that as a collective we can work together.
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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So, the basis of a-----
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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There is a structure there.
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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That should be someone within the community section of the local authority. They should be the link person back to the representative groups and organisations. Going back to my local authority, we have an estate manager and a community section that then links in.
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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Well, that needs to change because it is all-----
Ms Cecilia Forrestal:
We had some very powerful meetings when were able to have people from a very senior level in the Department of housing, including senior people from DCC, sit down with elected representatives and residents to have straight-talking conversations. It did not have to happen often. We had them every so often, but they could be really powerful, they cut through an awful lot of nonsense and generated an incredible amount of learning as well building relationships of trust, because they are fairly fractured as things stand. So, there is a need for that kind of line to be linked in.
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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I agree. I see it working in a different mechanism. It works in our area, where we have estate awards and good engagement with the local authority and all the various social housing estates throughout the county.
Ms Una Lowry:
Through the community of practice, we invited the director for regeneration from the local authority in Limerick to explain how it worked there. We worked with DCC to invite that individual to talk about the community practice. The learning was powerful in the room that day, but it has not gone anywhere. It needs to be replicated within DCC with a director for regeneration who has the resources and staff to put actual weight into regeneration.
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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We have a regeneration team in Longford County Council, and we do not have one in Dublin City Council.
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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We do not have one in Dublin City Council and we have one in Longford.
Mr. Peter Dorman:
The connection of national and local is key because that is part of the difficulty. The national Government says that it is the responsibility of local government and that was picked up by the Council of Europe. It said that it was constantly getting this kick back from the State when it criticised things. The State said it was delegating to the local authority and actually the Council of Europe said that it is not a get-out-of-jail-free card. It is the State that is responsible in these things in terms of the collective complaint. It is the State that is liable for the conditions these folks are living in and saying it is down to the local authority it is not-----
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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The local authority can apply to the Department for sanction for the position of a regeneration officer. That is what Longford County Council did. It was probably in 2015. I remember the discussion. We had issues in our county town in particular. We went down to Limerick and met the regeneration team in the council. We still have a team of people with an engineering staff member who deals with regeneration projects, such as retrofitting, etc., for which we look for national funding. Dublin City Council needs to apply to the Department for it to sanction a regeneration officer who can link in. It can be done.
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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We will get a date arranged and we will call over.
Mr. Peter Dorman:
Could I just add one little thing because I did not respond to Deputy Devine when she asked about the RTB and so on? I do not know what the answer to it is, whether it is the RTB or whatever, but there is a fundamental injustice that these folks as local authority tenants have no real recourse except to the local authority, which is their landlord, or above to the Ombudsman or the courts. What often happens is that people complain to the courts, it is settled on the steps, and another family is moved into the unit. The whole thing is about having an independent arbitrator so that if there are issues, people can bring them just like they could if they were a private tenant or in an approved housing body. That is not available to the tenants here and that is an anomaly.
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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A couple of other members want to come in for a couple of minutes. We will give everyone an opportunity. We will go with two minutes.
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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To be perfectly honest, we have heard everything that needs to be said. The residents have said that they are sick of talking, sick of engagement and sick of consultation without it resulting in actions. I hear that loud and clear.
The issue of officials constantly being turned over and changing roles and so on is deeply frustrating. We all experience that in different areas of the public service. However, in a case like this, having to almost start from page one of the copybook again in terms of the new official picking up the issues and asking tenants what they are and so on is disheartening, very frustrating and annoying. This is an issue that this committee needs to take up. This is such a serious issue in terms of the conditions that residents are living under that there has to be some consistency in the approach by local government and national government. It was mentioned that there was good engagement with Department officials in the past. That kind of proper, meaningful, action-led engagement is what is needed here. As a committee, we need to push for that to happen and not for interactions with different officials who are new to the scene and which do not result in the kind of meaningful action that is needed.
We have taken in a lot of what has been said. We will visit. It is not about photographs. I have no interest in photographs, and I do not think anyone here has. It is about just seeing it as a committee. We are the Oireachtas joint committee responsible for these issues. We will do that with sincerity and a genuine intention to try to move it forward.
We cannot work miracles but we certainly want to move this forward. We can only do so much. We need to ensure a proper structure is put in place, such as the engagement that was mentioned, which seemed to be beneficial in the past but is not happening now. We need to ensure that is resurrected. I will leave it at that but we have certainly heard the witnesses loud and clear.
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the witnesses for coming in. I know they are fed up of talking to politicians, but hearing them on the record here in the committee and having it on the Dáil record is important.
As a committee, going back to Mr. Dorman's point, what we can usefully do is try to influence Government policy. There are a few quick observations. Ms Cullen and Mr. Maloney have spoken a lot about ten to 15 years of work on the regeneration of the two flat complexes. To put it in context, Pearse House has about 340 units and Oliver Bond has just shy of 400. Agreement was obtained just a month or so ago to deal with 70 of those in Pearse House. There is no agreement yet to deal with any of them in Oliver Bond. Even if something happened over the next number of weeks with Oliver Bond, it would still affect only 20% of the overall units. Dolphin House is in a more complex set of circumstances.
There are about 6,000 flats in Dublin, according to Dublin City Council, between 100 complexes built between the thirties and the early eighties, that need regeneration. In fairness to Deputy McGrath he has not mentioned it, but Cork has flat complexes built in the 1950s, smaller in number but with significant structural defects. It is not just a Dublin issue. As a committee we need to be thinking about what proposals we can put to the Government to change the policy to address the issues. That is the bit that is broken here.
It is important to acknowledge that last night in Dublin City Council a motion was passed unanimously by Government and Opposition councillors calling on the Minister for housing to intervene and reverse the decision with respect to Oliver Bond. The Minister has now agreed to meet. That is happening next Tuesday. I do not think we should just accept the Department's view. Deputy McAuliffe's comments earlier today were very pertinent. As a former Dublin city councillor, he has direct experience of Ballymun regeneration. In his view, the Department is too often in the detail, in the weeds, when it should not be. Dublin City Council should be allowed to move by itself. That is going to require significant funding and staffing, with a senior official in Dublin City Council, not a low-level officer. That is no disrespect to hard-working low-level officers, but it needs somebody with decision-making power to drive the scheme, and then something similar in Cork and elsewhere.
Senator Andrews introduced me to a wonderful woman called Kathleen Delamere from Markievicz House. She was 96 when we met. She passed away about a year ago. A unique aspect of these flats is that, when her family were moved from the tenements in Townsend Street, the then Dublin Corporation had the foresight to move in families in the same order in which they had lived in the tenements because it understood that these communities actually pre-existed these flats by long periods. Families and communities were kept together when the tenements were knocked down and these flat complexes were built. It is not that people are saying that nobody else can move in, because communities change and people move in and out, but there is a cohesion to these communities that has to be saved and maintained.
Our committee Chair could do some useful work reflecting after the visit as to what serious recommendation we should put to the Government. I also urge, and I say this respectfully because this committee has a good working relationship, those members from Government parties to talk to their Dublin city councillors, those who spoke at the meeting last night. They should ask them what they want from the housing Minister with respect to Oliver Bond. It is the most immediate decision. That decision could be reversed and Oliver Bond could get the green light, and at least the beginning of that could start. That would be a tangible outcome. There is a resistance from the Department to the merger of units. We see it all the time. There is a logic to mergers, however. Yes, we need studios and one-bedroom units, but we need units for families with children, whether one child or two or four. We need that mix in the flat complexes in the new developments around the city.
For those members who are not from the city, they might talk to colleagues because they know what is happening on the ground. The fact Dublin City Council last night called unanimously on the Minister to reverse the Oliver Bond decision and allow it to proceed as per the council plan speaks to the same unity of purpose that we have. If we are able to replicate that call of Dublin City Council in the coming period, it would be a tangible outcome showing that the communities have been listened to here today.
I thank the witnesses for their time. It is good to have them here.
Paula Butterly (Louth, Fine Gael)
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I will be short and sweet. Deputy Ó Broin is absolutely right. There is a series of reflections and discussions to be had among the committee as to how this can move forward and to get some tangible results rather than just constantly talking about it. I will take on the suggestion about talking to colleagues. I have to say, I did get a brief glimpse at Christmas when I happened to mention a book I wanted and was duly given Flats and Cottages by Deputy Ó Broin. I got a great history lesson.
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Not by me, I might add.
Paula Butterly (Louth, Fine Gael)
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No, not by him. He would not even autograph it.
This is serious. I was aware of the councillors' decision. It is about community. We see that in Drogheda and Dundalk, where there are not flats but there are houses with communities that are struggling. The community spirit there is wonderful.
I will digress for a moment. Ms Mulhall was talking about collecting 20 pence pieces. Recently, I met a particular girl who is very active in out local community. She is on to me non-stop telling me we need a path or this or that. When she went to secondary school, she was talking about the summer holidays and the fact they would be going to Tayto Park. She was gobsmacked that her new friends in secondary school asked, "Who does that?", and she said, "We all go". The families and the communities save up and bring their kids to Tayto Park. She said, "Imagine, they live in those fancy houses and they don't know each other, and they never do anything together. We do everything together." That is a very special bond that should never be lost.
Máire Devine (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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The witnesses are probably sick of seeing me. Will this decision have a chilling effect on other regeneration projects? The Minister needs to repair that, and to do that he should reverse this decision. There is so much we need to regenerate but this chilling effect is going to affect everybody. I would like to know the cost of the 21 years waiting among all the different regeneration projects, at least in the Dublin 8 area, which I know of. They have been waiting and planning for 20 or 25 years and I would love to know what the cost is. That cost has to include the cost to residents who have given their all to it in monetary and emotional terms and in terms of the rollercoaster they have been on and the frequent heartbreak. Their volunteerism, most of the time, has been invested in it and that does not seem to be costed. It seems to have been discarded too lightly.
Those who do not live in the city will just have to imagine Oliver Bond in Dublin 8. It is a big complex in the middle of our old town, the Liberties, which we are rightly proud of, and all around it are cranes and building sites for transient accommodation, student accommodation, hotels and aparthotels. It is considered one of the premier tourist sites in Dublin because the trail has Kilmainham Gaol, Trinity College and so on. When tourists are told to go there, that community is gradually being dissipated. The indigenous community, if we can call it that, is being priced out of housing. The Oliver Bond people are going to say, "I'm upping sticks and I'm not coming back because this regeneration has turned into a joke." Dolphin House is surrounded by significant sites that have been derelict for 50 years plus. The ice skating rink and Rialto cinema used to be there. It has all fallen apart. There is much that Dublin City Council and local authorities can do but there is no commitment to anything.
I do not know if there is any foresight, in-depth ideas, or maybe care. I am not sure "care" is the word for a person's job in Dublin City Council but maybe an investment in communities that are surrounded by stuff that negates them. Well done to the witnesses. I ask them to please keep at it. I understand if they want to stop off but I hope they come back to it.
Chris Andrews (Sinn Fein)
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There has been a call for a reversal of the decision in Oliver Bond and it goes without saying that this is something that should happen. Deep retrofitting was committed to in Pearse House flats. While it is better than what is there at the moment, it is still a yellow pack version of what residents should be getting. Residents in Pearse House deserve better. I call on the Minister to reverse the decision on Pearse House and give the residents what they deserve, which is a full regeneration scheme.
In October 2024, the Dublin city task force was launched with its "10 big moves", as it called them. One of those was social housing regeneration. That has evolved into Dublin city regeneration authority and Robert Watt will be the CEO of that on a salary of €280,000. I cannot help thinking it is jobs for the boys. Where does that fit in to these? One of the ten big moves was social housing regeneration. Have the witnesses seen anything on that in terms of plans and proposals? For residents, what impact does these ten big moves have? Where does these, the Dublin city regeneration authority and the €280,000 salary for its CEO fit it for residents?
Mr. Peter Dorman:
As I understand it, and correct me if I am wrong, the focus of that is actually on the city centre area. It does not really touch the areas that relate to those who are sitting with us here. We have had the north inner city focus with the task force there. We now have this move with the city centre. There has not been any equivalent in the area of the south city, Dublin 8 area out to Ballyfermot, and that kind of task force idea that will look at those kind of things. Pearse House falls outside those initiatives as well.
Chris Andrews (Sinn Fein)
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Pearse House is considered to be, as is, city centre. Most people see Pearse Street, the Liberties and Thomas Street as being in the inner city yet they are not considered. That is something that should be examined. It is disappointing to hear that it is not going to be part of any big move for residents.
Ms Cecilia Forrestal:
When the collective complaint was put together, which started back in 2014, nine of the communities in the north inner city were part of the evidence that we gathered, as were four of the communities in Limerick. Over the years, it is really hard, with very limited resources - or now no resources because Community Action Network is gone - to maintain the contact across all those cities. That is why we need to have something in a more dedicated fashion that is a recognised infrastructure. Over the years, there is the effort and the disappointment of the down the hill up the hill roller coaster that we have just heard about and it is very hard to hold out the vision all the time that change is possible. You would need to be very close to the ground to be able to maintain that and to do it. It becomes very fragmented. The gap between the north inner city and the south inner city can very easily widen, even though they are in the same local authority.
Chris Andrews (Sinn Fein)
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They are the same community as well.
Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the witnesses again. There are a number of lessons we can learn from the debacle of the withdrawal of funding. Some of that from my point of view is that we need a full timetabled master plan from the start, not this stop, start thing. We have known that from Dolphin House. We now know it from Oliver Bond House and probably the same in Pearse House, although I am not across that in the detail I used to be way back in the eighties. It is that stop-start nature. The other thing I have learned is something Ms Lowry mentioned, which is these meanwhile actions - the stuff that needs to happen now. I think they call them confidence building measures. When the State is failing the community in the way it has in this instance, not just of late but for a long time, it needs to put in those measures that will help hold the community together, whether it is funding youth workers or doing the stuff that Ms Cullen-Doyle and Mr. Maloney were mentioning to hold the community together so that those who are holding the community together and who are community leaders are not burdened with having to scrape around to get funding for basic community supports, whether that is for the summer project, to organise a football tournament or whatever else. We know the make-up of the community and we know they are disadvantaged. In other communities, it is a very easy thing for some of those living in the big houses to put their hands in their pocket - it may be a bit more difficult now - to pay or to donate to something in working class communities. They all still put their hands in their pockets, in fairness to them, but they will not be pulling out the big notes. It is a testament to these working class communities that they still exist, still have that pride and still produce community workers like the witnesses.
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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I thank the members and all our guest speakers.
Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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The clerk to the committee has the contact details and we will organise on a morning and let members know, that is, as many as are available on the morning of the sitting week. We will do that in the short term. I thank everyone for giving their time and for their testimony.