The sun shone and a carnival atmosphere reigned at Fatima Mansions yesterday at the launch of Dublin Corporation's £100 million redevelopment scheme.
Children with painted faces leapt around on bouncy castles and ate ice-creams while loud music was piped from the community centre, its graffiti freshly painted out only last Friday.
In a white marquee the Taoiseach announced plans to demolish and rebuild completely the troubled complex, which has become a by-word for inner-city deprivation, drug abuse and disadvantage.
Local people queued to get their copy of Dublin Corporation's glossy brochure Regeneration - Next Generation, which promises a bright future for the 700 residents of the run-down 50-year-old flats.
The 14 eight-storey blocks will be replaced by 300 centrally-heated two-, three- and four-storey houses and duplexes with rear gardens. Some 300 private apartments will be built on two of the site's 11 acres.
The plan includes a three-month consultation period with Fatima residents, local businesses and residents in the Rialto area beyond the complex's high walls, which are due to come down. The final scheme is due to be launched in June.
Amid yesterday's pageantry many local people praised the plan. But some were worried that the housing density would mean another "mini bleedin' Fatima". Several women insisted that they did not want to live in duplexes, with neighbours above or below them.
"That's going back to the old flat complexes again," said Ms Ellen Byrne from Drimnagh, who moved out of the area 15 years ago due to its drugs problems. "Unfortunately, I still have two children living here." Fatima Mansions was built in 1951 to replace slums in central Dublin. Nuala Keeley remembers as a child saying the rosary at the statue of Our Lady of Fatima. She shares a two-bedroom ground-floor apartment with a front garden in R Block with her 25-year-old son and pet dog.
It is one of the better blocks. In H Block many young people have died from drug-related deaths over the years.
Like all the other flats, Ms Kelley's does not have central heating. She has a coal fire in her living room and a gas cylinder heater. Like all the other residents, she puts on extra clothes to go to bed at night.
Ms Kelley says she was not conscious of any stigma attaching to the area when she was a child, although she is now.
"If I was in a taxi and I didn't know the driver, I would never say Fatima Mansions," she says. "I don't think they would come here, I really don't." Despite this, she would not leave the area, even for £1 million. It's all she knows.
Within 20 years of being built, the rot began to take hold in Fatima Mansions, exacerbated by unemployment and poor estate management. Those who could got out of the place and were replaced by troubled families.
When the heroin epidemic swept through the inner city, Fatima Mansions became a no-go area. Refurbishment of the blocks by the corporation in the mid-1980s was too little, too late.
Mr Joe O'Donohoe, the chairperson of Fatima Groups United, says morale in the estate was at an all-time low some six years ago, with open drug dealing. A task force of residents, community groups, public representatives and gardai was set up.
Fatima Groups United was formed as an umbrella group and has been vocal in advocating for the residents. The group published its own comprehensive and tastefully-packaged "brief" for the area last year.
Yesterday it issued a press statement welcoming Dublin Corporation's initiative, but also expressing worries. Will the draft plan "de-ghettoise" the complex, it asked, or exacerbate the existing social divide by creating two new neighbouring ghettoes.
The city manager, Mr John Fitzgerald, says the development has got all the ingredients to be top class. "It's all about movement and compromise and I'm confident that a plan will be agreed," he said.
Mr O'Donohoe said the proposed partnership was unique, and could work. "Now is a new beginning and today is just the beginning of that," he said.