Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for taking this matter, which relates to an issue over which residents of the Noonan's Road area are tearing their hair out. We talk about Noonan's Road, but we are really talking about the few flats just off it as well, in St. Finbarr's Road and other locations. Noonan's Road is the main thoroughfare in the area and was developed in the 1960s and 1970s after the lanes and tenements that had existed there were cleared. The area has never seen any real remediation in that time. In conversations with Cork City Council about maintenance requests for that ward of the city, this area and these apartments dominate.

If the Minister of State visits Cork over the coming months, I would love for him to meet the residents and see the desperate condition of these apartments. They are damp and cold and it is becoming clear there has been only tinkering around the edges. There have been numerous applications to the city council from the apartments and a lot of them have been turned down, although there has been a lot of back-and-forth between the Department and the council over the course of the past year and a half, since Deputy Gould and I last raised this with the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, in December 2021. At that time, there was an indication there was some back-and-forth with the council about funding, but it is now becoming apparent that tinkering around the edges is not going to do the job and that it needs full-scale regeneration.

The residents are organised and handed in a petition to Cork City Council on Monday. I commend them on what they are doing. What we need to hear from central government is that when Cork City Council comes with a serious proposal for full regeneration, the Department will fund it.

See this speech in context