Jimmy Dignam, Workers’ Party representative Dublin North West
Workers’ Party Dublin North-West representative, Jimmy Dignam, has stated that DCC’s housing report on Ballymun is just a smokescreen for their ambition to only use the private market to build new homes.
Dignam stated:
“DCC’s latest report essentially blames Ballymun’s regeneration issues on social housing and is an insult to the wider community and a rewriting of the area’s history. This myth perpetuated by sections of the political establishment and media, that Ballymun’s problems would be resolved through the building of private housing, completely ignores all research on sustainable community planning.
DCC are only using this argument as a smokescreen for their agenda of only using the private market to build new homes across the city.”
Dignam continued:
“Ballymun’s regeneration was never completed and vital necessities such as shopping facilities and sustainable employment have still not been provided to the community. Ballymun relies heavily on social services due to a lack of investment and successive Governments’ complete abandonment of the area. Minister Coveney and his department’s recent decision to stop funding for social regeneration in 2017 is further evidence of this.
Dignam concluded:
“The Workers’ Party fully accepts that diverse and mixed income areas are vital in creating sustainable communities. Earlier this year we launched our housing policy ‘Solidarity Housing’, which proposes that 50% of new council homes would be rented to people on the housing waiting list, with the other half going to people who currently exceed the threshold.
Our proposal was initially adopted for the O’Devaney Gardens site in Dublin 7 and I’d like to remind DCC that they went to great lengths to reverse the initial decision voted through by Councillors. The Council only seem interested in allowing private developers to build homes across the city. It is quite galling that they are trying to disguise this fact by stigmatising social housing tenants.”