Gino Kenny (Dublin Mid West, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I welcome this discussion in respect of the proposed Dublin north inner city development authority. Dublin's inner city has been marginalised by inequality and the consequences of drug addiction. It should not be defined by those things because it is a very decent community to live and work in. What has happened there is the result of Government policies over the decades.

Most people are in favour of regeneration but what kind of regeneration are we seeking? Regeneration of areas has not always been good. In some cases, it has been quite bad. For example, the Dublin docklands have been completely gentrified. People whose families have lived there for generations cannot afford to rent or buy apartments or houses in the area. This is happening not only in Dublin but also in other communities across Europe. People whose families have lived in areas for generations have been pushed out by high finance in order to make way for gentrification through the building of apartment and office blocks. That is not what regeneration is about. If regeneration is about a social dividend for the people who live in an area, then those responsible for the regeneration of the docklands got it dramatically wrong. Urban renewal schemes enjoyed success in the context of specific areas being physically regenerated but evidence shows that they fail dramatically to address the socioeconomic difficulties of working class communities across the State. Any regeneration process must be community-led, not developer-led. I will refer again to the docklands where the regeneration was developer-led. There have been some good regenerations for aesthetic and livelihood reasons but in terms of poverty and inequality it has been quite a failure.

The Bill proposes that there be three places on the authority for community representatives. This is an imbalance that has to be addressed. It is proposed that there will be 15 members on the proposed authority. If there are only three members to represent the community, there will be a major imbalance. There has to be a balance in terms of the people from the community the proposed authority is supposed to benefit being represented.

That would be good. We must learn the lessons from the past and present that regeneration can be good but it can also be an extreme failure, as has panned out in the docklands. We welcome the discussion over the next couple of days.

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