Women laden with shopping and mothers carrying babies strolled in the sunshine yesterday amid signs that life may soon get back to normal in high-rise Ballymun.
Lift workers have been a rare sight in the housing estate over the past 81 days. Yesterday, after the area was exempted from national strike action, they were back to the obvious delight of tenants.
Sinead Kirwan (23) stepped from the one working lift in the 15-storey Sean MacDermott Tower and smiled when she saw a small gathering of lift workers. "Hooray, you are finally here," she said.
She has two small children, and it had been "a nightmare" when she had to struggle up to her 12thfloor flat with shopping and a buggy. Her relief was shared by many tenants, especially young mothers and the elderly, as 13 lift workers began repairing lifts all over the complex. Less than half of the 73 lifts were working in the estate yesterday.
A spokesman for Dublin Corporation was hopeful that would improve dramatically over coming weeks.
That time can't come soon enough for 76-year-old Rosanna Heeney, whose story of hardship has epitomised the plight of many in Ballymun.
She has been a virtual prisoner on the seventh floor of her block, where the lift is currently being refurbished. She walks with a stick after a hip replacement operation in November.
"It has been terrible, lonely and depressing," she said yesterday. There was a man on the sixth floor with a heart condition. "At least they have come now. I hope it's fixed by Christmas," she said.
Sean O Cionnaith of the Ballymun Better Lifts Campaign said he was delighted that the TEEU, the lift workers' union, had exempted Ballymun from the strike. "It's a pity that it took 80 days for them to realise the extreme hardship suffered by 6,000 members of the working-class community in Ballymun," he said.
"It is good news for Ballymun that a full service should be back fairly shortly," said the chief regional officer for Dublin Corporation, Mr Gerry O'Donoghue. The presence of the lift workers would be renegotiated on a weekto-week basis.
It would ease "headaches" for the corporation, he added, but the main benefits would be seen by the community in Ballymun.