The council wasn’t hiring a municipal walker, but she took the job anyway
Once a month since September 2022, artist Lian Bell has done a full circuit of the North and South Circular Roads, observing these 14km through the seasons.
This isn’t viable, so another use for the site will have to be found, a council official said.
Councils are reluctant to use the single-stage process because they take on more risk if something goes wrong, says Sinn Féin TD and housing spokesperson Eoin Ó Broin.
“I just cannot get over that they didn’t maintain the same level of funding at a minimum, because it’s a bloody great scheme,” says Fine Gael Councillor Tom O’Leary, of the homelessness-prevention scheme.
The Department of Housing has vetoed the council’s designs for the Herbert Simms-designed Pearse House in the south inner-city.
Debate so far has been around the current costs of maintenance, which tenants may be asked to pay more, and the fairness of rent rises for those in poor conditions.
The council’s current target is to knock and build new social homes on the site in the heart of the south-inner city by early 2028.
At one site, on Bonham Street, 57 “rapid-build” homes took almost four years to build and cost 51 percent more than originally agreed, an auditor’s report says.
Last year, tenants in Drimnagh and Cabra said they had been barred from communal facilities. Now, tenants in a new Liberties complex are finding the same.
Solicitor Peter Boyle said he thinks many more tenants have strong cases they could take against the council, based on the mould and damp they are living with
Erika Dunne’s six-year-old son Ben has autism, a learning disability, and is nonverbal, and she needed a home she could adapt to keep him from hurting himself.
The council’s outgoing head of housing, Coilín O’Reilly, said that isn’t going to happen.
“How do kids integrate in a community?” says Niamh Fox, one of the residents. “It’s just not right.”