Councillor warns against further takeovers of vacant buildings

A local politician has warned against further occupations of vacant buildings after the short-lived takeover of a Finglas apartment block. A section of the Prospect Hill complex containing 60 apartments was taken over by a group calling itself the Premier Love Project. The group planned to offer the apartments to those on waiting lists for social housing but were ejected from the property by gardaí after a few hours.

Dublin City Council said it had already bought the building from Nama and was in the process of renovating it for use as social housing. There were several fire safety issues with the building which needed to be addressed before new residents could move in, a spokesman said.

Dublin city councillor Paul McAuliffe (FF) said he has been working with current residents in the complex to get it ready. “From the allocation side, they’re at a very advanced stage,” he said. “We’re at a very close stage and I would fear that any repeat or further occupation would cause further delays in terms of legal costs and so on. The issue of homeless should remain front and centre but we need to make sure we don’t delay anything on this site because I know that families are waiting for these units.

“I just don’t see how a splintering or contagion of these types of occupations would help,” he added. “What we would be better doing would be identifying units that are empty and seeing if the council can use them.”

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Occupied Finglas apartments had been bought for social housing

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Mr Auliffe said the council intended to step up the use of compulsory purchase orders in 2017 to secure extra housing. “Apollo House is really good political action but a contagion would actually tie up more resources when we should be concentrating on spreading the use of compulsory purchase orders over 2017.”

Members of the Premier Love Project did not respond to requests for comment on Friday. The group is not part of the Home Sweet Home organisation which took over Apollo House earlier this month, although a Home Sweet Home spokeswoman said it supported such actions.

"If these actions were to happen, we would support them and offer to link in with them as well," Rosi Leonard said. "We do things in Apollo House to an extremely high standard and I think we have a lot of knowledge to pass on as a result. We absolutely support people taking action against the crisis."