Dublin City Flat Complex Retrofit and Regeneration: Motion [Private Members]
Dail Éireann — 2026-05-06
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Eoin Ó Broin (SF), Dublin Mid-West

The approach of the Minister to inner-city flat complex regeneration is fundamentally flawed. After three long years of consultation with the local community on Oliver Bond Street, Dublin City Council made a very detailed proposal.
It would take 74 1930s flats and bring them up to modern standards with a loss of 28 units. It identified a brand-new site, adjacent to Oliver Bond flats, with an additional 43 units. That is a net increase of 15 homes. In addition to that, there would be a community centre. The Minister has refused funding for that. The letter was sent to the council this week. He has refused funding on the most spurious of grounds, namely, that the Department cannot accept a reduction in the number of units. What the Minister is proposing is that instead of having an adequate mix of one-, two- and three-bedroom homes in these large flat complexes, these will have to be scaled down to a large volume of studios, one-beds and some two-beds. That is going to fundamentally undermine the coherence of those housing estates. The Minister will not be able to do that across all of the blocks in Pearse House or in Oliver Bond flats. It is a fundamentally flawed approach. This policy says fewer people will live there. The units will be maintained - this fictional target - but fewer people will live there.
With respect to the other schemes the Minister has mentioned, he listed off a series of regeneration schemes where communities were destroyed ten or 20 years ago, flung to the four corners of our city, and only now the Department is finally getting around to rebuilding them.
The Minister's approach to this is a mistake and it is one he needs to reverse. I think he is being badly advised by the Department. He is refusing to listen to the residents who have given enormous amounts of time to this consultation. The irony is that if a private landlord was the owner of these flats, they would be in front of the Residential Tenancies Board, fined and the problems would be fixed. If an approved housing body was the landlord of these flats, it would be in front of the Residential Tenancies Board and forced to fix them. However, the Minister is refusing funding, is pursuing a failed policy and, as a consequence, thousands of people in Dublin, Cork and elsewhere will live in slum conditions. That is his policy. He can come into the House and speak for four or five minutes, having not listened to the debate, and think that might convince somebody. It does not convince us and, more importantly, it does not convince the residents in the flats he is allowing to live in squalor. He should reverse the decision, change the policy, fund the councils to fix the flats and stop misleading this House with information about what is going on on the streets of Dublin, Cork and elsewhere.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-05-06/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:54+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-06