What happened to the promise of reopening the Intreo Centre on the Navan Road?

On 30 April, around 3:30pm, a social worker was attempting to hail a taxi outside the Intreo Centre on Parnell Street. The wind was strong and there was light rain.

The woman was helping a elderly man in a wheelchair, who needs to travel from Simon Community in Dublin 7 to the Intreo Centre.

Earlier that day, none of the desks at the centre facing the street had staff. On the left at the back was a self-service point. A member of staff was sitting on a desk in the entrance talking to the people arriving.

These days, people come from all over Dublin 1, 3, and 7 to this centre, even if they have to travel some distance. Because the Intreo Centre on Navan Road in Cabra has been closed since April 2022.

But it should be reopened, Labour Party Councillor Declan Meenagh said at a meeting of the council’s Central Area Committee on 9 April.

He put forward a motion asking that the committee write to the Department of Social Protection requesting that they schedule a date to reopen the Navan Road centre.

“We can not tolerate the state effectively stealing public services by stealth  which is what is happening here,” he says.

Councillors had a letter in 2022 saying the plan was for the closure to be temporary, said Meenagh. “That time is nearly up and all we want to do is write to the Department of Social Protection, and say in light of that letter can you schedule the date to reopen the Intreo office because people in Cabra deserve a Intreo service.“

After the meeting, Meenagh put the closure in the context of the retreat of other bricks-and-mortar services around Cabra and Phibsboro – pointing to, among other things, An Post’s plan to maybe move, and to contract out the running of, the Phibsboro post office.

Meenagh’s motion passed.

Promises vs reality

Intreo Centres were rolled out as one-stop shops for jobseekers, where they can walk in and get employment and financial supports, without having to shuttle between different state agencies.

Asked about the Navan Road centre in the Dáil in July 2022, Minister for Social Protection Heather Humphries, a Fine Gael TD, said that there’d been a plan to upgrade the building that year.

Initially there’d been no plans to change its layout, but with the department pushing more Intreo Centre services online, they were re-evaluating how best to use the building, she said.

“In terms of the layout of the Department’s Intreo Centres, this means that instead of large waiting areas with rows of seats and multiple hatches, the Department will be providing self-service zones with interactive touch screens,” Humphries said.

“It was considered appropriate to pause the works while further consideration was given to the optimal use of the building,” she said.

In November 2022, the Department of Social Protection sent a letter to Meenagh, saying the Office of Public Works (OPW) had stepped up and said An Garda Síochána (AGS) urgently needed to use the building, temporarily, for some of its critical units.

“It is expected that AGS will require this accommodation until April next year“, the letter says. So, until April 2023.

“In the meantime, people living in the Dublin 7 area who need to attend an office can visit the King’s Inns/Parnell Street or Blanchardstown Intreo Centre,” the letter said.

In December 2022, Sinn Féin Councillor Séamas McGrattan proposed a motion calling on the Minister for Social Protection to reopen the centre – which the Central Area Committee agreed.

On the phone on 30 April, McGrattan said, “the guards were in there on a temporary basis but the guards are now gone”.

From the outside on 28 April, the building appeared vacant, the grass uncut.

Yet, a spokesperson for An Garda Síochána (AGS) said on 23 April that the guards are still using the building, They didn’t not respond to a query on when they planned to move out.

A spokesperson for the Office of Public Works (OPW) said on 25 April that it is “an operational matter for AGS in conjunction with the OPW”.

Says McGrattan: “It is different departments saying different things now at the moment, the Department of Social Protection gave the building over to the OPW and to Justice for temporary use and they haven’t given it back yet.”

“We are just going to keep the pressure on them at the moment,” he says, about initiatives to resume the Intreo Centre operations there.

Meenagh, at the Central Area Committee meeting earlier this month, said: “We accept that there was an emergency need by the Garda when the office was done up for a specialised unit and we took them on good faith that it was a temporary closure.”

But now, a year past the expected return of the building, there’s still no date for when the Intreo Centre will reopen there.

A spokesperson for the Department of Social Protection said that it reviews its business requirements on an ongoing basis. “The Department of Social Protection is providing Intreo Centre services for people living in Dublin 1, 3 and 7 in Parnell Street Intreo Centre, Dublin 1.”

Asked in February 2024 by Sinn Féin TD Mary Lou McDonald in the Dáil when the centre would re-open, Fine Gael TD Patrick O’Donovan, then minister of state at the Department of Public Expenditure, said there was no date.

“While the Department [of Social Protection] reviews its business requirements on an on-going basis, there are no plans at present to return to the Navan Road location,” he said.

Part of a bigger picture

The closure was supposed to be temporary, said Meenagh, the Labour councillor, by phone on 17 April. “I fear that this is a [permanent] closure by stealth.”

“This was a great resource for the community which is been lost now,” says  McGrattan.

“It is unacceptable that people have to travel into town to access these services, they need to have it  locally,” he says,

Meenagh also worries that the Phibsborough post office might be closed. That fear was raised several years ago but didn’t happen at that point.

An Post is again saying that it will outsource the running of the post office, and potentially change where it is, says a Labour Party petition to stop that from happening.

“The closure of the post office would result in the loss of a vital public service, particularly for the elderly,” Meenagh said.

As with other areas, banks have also downgraded branches in Phibsboro and Cabra, he says. “So now you go in and someone is telling you how to use an ATM and no other services.” “Effectively delivering local public services is under attack in this area, ” says Meenagh.