Task force government set up “to rejuvenate” Dublin city centre didn’t talk to forum government set up to make the city centre safer

The “high-level” task force that the government launched last May to recommend how to rejuvenate Dublin city centre and make it safer failed to consult the main existing forum set up to address safety in the north inner-city.

The new task force was to report back within 12 weeks, the Taoiseach, Fine Gael TD Simon Harris, said in the Dáil late that month.

“The goal is to make Dublin city centre a more thriving, attractive and safe cityscape, and a desirable location to live, work, do business and visit,” he said.

When the task force launched, councillors pointed out how many forums there already, are with overlapping aims.

Chief among them is the North Inner City Local Community Safety Partnership, which is chaired by Eddie Mullins, the former governor of Mountjoy.

Mullins said on Tuesday that the partnership hadn’t been invited to contribute to the high-level task force.

“No, no, no involvement whatsoever, which is a bit bizarre,” Mullins says. “There are a lot of organisations and a lot of forums, but it is the synergy between them all that is the big question.”

Councillors and TDs are also now asking why, 21 weeks on, the high-level task force’s report hasn’t been published. It’s well past time to move past brainstorming sessions to actual action, which has been the main challenge all along, they say.

Noel Wardick, CEO of Dublin City Community Co-op, an alliance of 13 community development organisations in the inner-city, says he went to a task-force consultation over the summer.

“It was a standard consultation on the challenges of the city and how to address them,” he says, sounding jaded.  “It was stuff we had been involved in 150 times before.”

As he sees it, there’s no point in hiring private companies to carry out consultations and then roll out report after report unless the government takes on board the scale of the problems in the inner-city, which means addressing the root causes of poverty and disadvantage, says Wardick.

Crucial to that is the housing crisis, said Wardick.

“The idea that they can swoop in with these task forces and appoint corporate leaders, and they will magically wave a wand, because they turned some company around,” says Wardick. “It’s nonsense and it’s just futile, wishful thinking.”

The Department of the Taoiseach hasn’t responded to queries as to when the report will be published and what funding will be put behind any recommendations.

What is the problem?

Dublin’s inner-city is an exciting place. It has eclectic gigs, wandering artists, Korean corn dogs, Ethiopian manuscripts, and packed galleries.

But some residents, workers and day-trippers in the city centre have said they don’t feel safe, or that the streets are dirty.

The new task force – a joint project of the Department of the Taoiseach, the Department of Housing, and the Department of the Environment, according to the press release – was set up to push progress on dealing with that.

“The High-Level Taskforce will make clear and concrete recommendations on improving the City Centre’s public realm, safety and experience within a 12-week timeframe,” it says.

Five months on, the report hasn’t been published.

Social Democrats TD Gary Gannon, who represents the north inner-city, asked about the report in the Dáil on 26 September, but didn’t get much of a response. He understands the report is done, he says, just not public.

Gannon says it is time to move on from talking about bright ideas for how to scrub up the city centre and to start doing it.

“It’s embarrassing at this point that it has dragged on so long,” he said. “It’s disappointing for those of us who care about the city and care about issues of crime and dereliction.”

He hopes the task-force report will contain a plan to tackle dereliction on O’Connell Street, regenerate rundown social housing, and provide Gardaí with extra resources they need to police the city.

Independent Councillor Mannix Flynn, who represents the south-east inner-city, says the council and Gardaí need to enforce the existing laws.

Especially those around public drunkeness, noise, public urination, and open drug-dealing, he says. “There has to be consequences and charges.”

That means the council has to provide more public toilets, he says. “If you have a city centre where there are no toilets, then you’re living in a sewer.”

Wardick, the CEO of Dublin City Community Co-op, also said: “At the very least, on-street drug dealing, in full disregard of the law, cannot be tolerated.”

This activity makes residents living on those streets feel very unsafe, he says.

In some parts of the north inner-city, drug dealers cordon off streets, barricading the end of roads with industrial bins to make a roadblock that they then man, he says.

“It’s just extremely intimidating,” says Wardick.  “Residents are terrified.”

Most emergency accommodation for people who find themselves homeless for the wider Dublin region is located in the city centre – something Wardick also says needs to end.

Wardick queries the competence of senior officials who allowed the concentration of services such as emergency accommodation and drug treatment services in an already disadvantaged area with social problems.

“The state has created a poverty hub in the inner-city,” he says.

Imagine someone suggested placing all the emergency accommodation in Ireland in one town, Athlone for example, he says.

“It would be insane,” he says. “If you think there isn’t going to be consequences to that, you are completely naive or delusional.”

Also, the city centre won’t feel safe for many of its residents and workers so  long as divisive, anti-immigrant sentiment is on the rise, says Wardick.

Community activists had predicted that problems would erupt well ahead of the riots in the city centre last year. “We were extremely concerned that we were sitting on a tinder box in the city,” he says.

If people were caught off guard they shouldn’t have been, he says. “It seems that the state and officialdom were completely asleep at the wheel.”

People who are doing well don’t usually get caught up in anger towards their neighbours, he says.

But when people are desperate for basic resources like housing, they are more likely to become angry and can be manipulated into blaming others, he says.

Actually doing it

Drawing up a report is all good and well, says Gannon, the Social Democrats TD. But “someone needs to take responsibility for the implementation of the recommendations”.

Warwick, of the Community Co-op, said he wouldn’t favour yet another taskforce or partnership. There are just too many stakeholder forums already, he says “I just think they need to resource the structures that are there to run the city.”

Green Party Councillor Janet Horner, who represents the north inner-city, said, “It is not ideas we need, it is delivery.”

Most good ideas are already on the table, she said. “What is lacking is the resources to do them.”

Even once there is widespread agreement on what needs to happen, it takes such a long time to do it, she says. “How do we go from ideas to implementation?”

Horner says she wouldn’t favour any new agency, partnership or task force either. There is already confusion about who is responsible for what, she says.

Investing in Dublin City Council, preferably under a directly elected mayor, is one part of the solution to a well-managed city, she said. “We need to empower the local authority now to get to work urgently.”

Wardick says there are no quick fixes because the city centre won’t feel safe until poverty, disadvantage and homelessness are tackled. “The housing crisis is the epicentre of all of these problems.”