Regenerating Ballymun: new aspirations, old problems?

Ballymun was built in a hurry, an emergency response to a housing crisis precipitated by a pair of terrible events in the summer of 1963. Two elderly residents of Bolton Street, in the middle of Dublin, died when their home collapsed that June. Two weeks later two girls were walking on Fenian Street, near Merrion Square, when two houses toppled into the street, killing them both.

But once Ballymun’s tower blocks, with their 2,814 apartments, were built the complex developed many social problems, including growing heroin addiction during the 1980s, at least in part because the amenities that communities need were slow to arrive.

In the late 1990s Dublin City Council began work on a plan to regenerate the State’s largest, most deprived council-flat complex. Turning its fortunes around was never going to be plain sailing, but few could have predicted how troubled the waters would be. The regeneration project, which envisaged replacing the high-rises with several thousand new homes, was due to be finished by 2006, but demolition of the towers began only in 2004 and didn’t finish until last year.

The project was hit in 2007 when pyrite, a mineral that can cause severe structural defects, was discovered in the foundations of some of the new homes. About €10 million has been spent fixing the problem.

And although most of the 2,000 new homes were completed before the downturn, the crash held back the development of shops and other facilities.

In 2009 Treasury Holdings secured planning permission for Spring Cross, an €800 million development including an 11-screen cinema, bowling alley, library, creche and restaurants, as well as shops and offices. Treasury intended to build on the site of the dilapidated Ballymun Town Centre, but the site became part of Nama’s portfolio before any development began. Most retailers in the centre subsequently shut up shop, and in 2014 it lost its anchor tenant, Tesco.

For more than a year the council has been detenanting the centre in preparation for its demolition and in the hope of attracting a developer to build a new shopping complex. "There has been no economic regeneration of Ballymun," Noeleen Reilly, a Sinn Féin councillor, says. "We're still waiting for movement on the shopping centre site, but the market isn't responding, and there are no guarantees the shopping centre will happen any time soon."

Although shops might seem a minor issue, they’re essential to building a local economy. “A recent survey found only 10 per cent of people do their weekly shop in Ballymun. Too much retail seepage out of Ballymun means people aren’t spending money here. Also, the shopping centre would create much-needed jobs,” Reilly says.

The problem is circular: without jobs there is no spending power, making businesses reluctant to set up in the town. “Employment has remained static. Incomes have remained quite low, which is another difficulty in attracting businesses.”

Paul McAuliffe, a Fianna Fáil councillor, says that Ballymun didn’t benefit before the collapse from the extra jobs that other areas saw. “Coming from such a low base, it took longer for Ballymun to catch up during the employment boom, so they didn’t get the benefit of that whole period of prosperity, and a lot people who did get jobs are back unemployed since the crash.”

Mick Creedon of Ballymun Job Centre says, "There are more than 2,300 on the live register out of a labour force of about 7,500. But that doesn't tell the full story. Ballymun has a large number of single-parent families who aren't on the register if they are in receipt of a one-parent-family payment, and the same applies to people on disability payments and youth unemployed.

“A lot of work went into the physical regeneration of Ballymun, and that is a necessary starting point, but not as much thought was put into the social and economic regeneration of the area. We need a long-term economic and social strategy.”

Drug addiction remains a problem, according to the Labour councillor Andrew Montague. "We still have the highest opiate usage in the country. It's not so much younger people but those in their 30s, 40s or older, but we have to make sure the next generation don't follow, and this requires investment in education and youth mental health. The problems of Ballymun haven't gone away and will need continuous investment."

But people still want to live in the area, Montague says. “When the flats were there people wanted to get out of Ballymun. Now they want to stay. I can’t remember the last time I had someone coming to me looking for a transfer out of Ballymun.”

All three councillors point to the Axis arts centre, which opened in 2001, as a principal success. “We’re different from other arts centres: we’re also a community centre; we have a creche, a cafe. We’re really a town within a town, and we are hugely important to the cultural life of the community,” its director, Mark O’Brien, says.

The centre faces a funding cut next year. “We’re not just a resource for Ballymun. People come from all over the city and county to events in the Axis, and it’s vital for the area to have that draw.”

The future of Ballymun will be brought into sharp focus by the drafting in the autumn of a local area plan to determine the next phase of the suburb’s development.

"There are two key elements that Ballymun still needs: the shopping centre and Metro North. But it also needs an increased population," the council's area housing manager, Donal Barron, says. "There is a lot of vacant land in the area, and Ballymun has the lowest owner-occupier rate in the city, so we will be looking at that social balance and how to encourage private development."

Although the regeneration programme is at a close, Barron says, Ballymun is not considered a closed case. “Over €1 billion has been spent here. We have to protect that asset. It would be foolish not to continue funding Ballymun. We’d just end up back where we were all those years ago.”

Axis arts centre, which is also celebrating its 15th birthday, is marking Ballymun's 50th anniversary with a series of events that begins this weekend