With the bad days behind them, Fatima Mansion residents were in party mood as they moved into their new homes this week, writes Rosita Boland
Helen Finnegan is looking for her kettle. In fact, Helen, her three sisters, Phyllis, Liz and Mary, her son Cormac (11) and assorted neighbours are all helping to look for the kettle. They're all dying for a cup of tea. The kettle is buried somewhere in the living room, hidden among scores of boxes, black bags, pictures and all the other assorted things involved in moving home.
For virtually all of her life, apart from a short stint in Tallaght, Helen has lived in the Fatima Mansion flats complex. Her mother and grandmother also lived in Fatima, so her family has had an unbroken association with the once-notorious Dublin 8 flats since they were built in the 1950s.
Although deemed a successful community housing project in the early years, in the 1970s and early 1980s, Fatima Mansions had many problems. High unemployment hit Fatima particularly badly, resulting in social problems: drug-dealing, breakdown of community, vandalism and crime. The communal green spaces between blocks of flats became no-go areas, especially at night. And Fatima Mansions, like Dolphin House, St Teresa's Gardens and Ballymun, became synomnous with some of the worst of the city's problems.
This week, Helen moved from a three- bedroom flat on the first floor of the J block of flats to a brand new three-bedroom house on the Fatima site. This is home now for Helen, sons Cormac and Aidan, daughter Orna and husband Brian. There were 15 blocks of flats on the Fatima complex. Six have been demolished so far to make way for new buildings, and the remaining blocks are also due for demolition, to be replaced by a mixture of new houses and flats - a project that will have cost an estimated €200 million by the time it's completed.
"Much as I dislike saying it, Dublin City Council were very good. They consulted us and listened to us about what we wanted in our new homes. As landlords, they had to realise that tenants need better standards of accommodation," Helen says. "Fatima is very high- profile now. They know this area is changing. It has the Luas nearby and the area is being regenerated, so what happens here now is going to have a lot of attention."
Helen loves the new kitchen in her house. "There was only a scullery in the old flat. It was tiny. Only room for one person in it at a time," she says.
She also loves the long back garden. It's the first garden she has had. But what she loves most about her brand new home is that it is, as she says, "a definable space. In the old flat, we had to share a balcony. You had no say about what went on in your space. With balconies, you do have the advantage of being able to talk easily to your neighbours, but it can also be a big disadvantage, when there are some people on the balcony that you definitely do not want to talk to."
The Finnegans left all their old furniture behind them in the flat. Each household being rehoused got a €3,000 interest-free loan, payable over five years, to enable them to buy new furniture.
"Everything was so old we just left it there. The council said they'd take it away," Helen says.
Cormac buzzes in and out the door, followed by several neighbours, all wildly curious to see what the new houses look like.
"I love the new house, it's deadly. Deadly!" he screeches. What does he like best about it? "The kitchen," he says, straight away.
Next door, Deirdre Little, partner Michael Hooper and son Ross, are supervising the delivery of their old fridge. Deirdre's father, Christopher, and her sister, Carol Lawrence, are also there.
"I love this place," Deirdre says, looking around her kitchen. She waves at the rows of still-empty presses. "How will I ever fill them? I'm not used to all this room!"
"Dublin City Council did listen to their tenants this time; they consulted us all the way on what we wanted," Deirdre says.
Next door, Phyllis comes out to tell Helen that the kettle has been found. She looks around her, up and down the road, where Allen Removals are toting fridges and flat-packed furniture. "It's brilliant," she says. "You'd never have thought something like this would come out of Fatima."
"You'd never have thought that the council had a conscience," Helen says frankly.
The council's conscience came under further pressure later in the week, after Seán Mulvany (11), a pupil at Synge Street Primary School, and resident of block H in Fatima, interviewed Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern before the key handover, and also went on Tuesday's Tubridy Show to make a riveting and articulate appeal for a playground in Fatima.
Speaking on the phone from his school later in the week, he says: "Everyone in the world right now is complaining about kids being obese.
"We need a playground now, not in four or five years' time. The new houses are great, but kids shouldn't be sitting in them watching telly all the time, eating and doing nothing. We need to play out."
Location: Fifteen original blocks of flats between Rialto and Dolphin's Barn, on an 11-acre site.
Constructed: between the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Number of flats: 363 (last refurbished in the 1980s)
Cost of demolition and redevelopment: €200 million
First phase: 110 houses and apartments, to be completed by the end of 2005.
Second phase: Thirty social housing units, 70 affordable homes and 396 flats, due for completion in 2008