Cllr. Éilis Ryan
Eilis Ryan, Workers’ Party Councillor for the North Inner City has blasted the Dublin North Inner City Taskforce Report for ignoring vital issues like housing and instead focusing on ‘narrative changing’.
Cllr Ryan attacked the report, authored by Kieran Mulvey, for focusing on clichés over actual substance:
“The focus in the report on ‘narrative changing’ is deeply disappointing”, said Cllr Ryan. “After decades of neglect the communities in the North Inner City deserve more than patronising clichés about branding that are lacking in any real substance. They deserve a clear and focused strategy of public investment in jobs and housing to tackle the inequality and severe disadvantage that they face”.
Cllr Ryan was appalled at the lack of a strategy for housing in the area saying: ‘The lack of public housing is the number one issue in the North Inner City at the moment. While office blocks and luxury apartments are being built in the Docklands, working class people are being left to languish on the housing waiting list for years.”
“Unfortunately the report does absolutely nothing to address the crisis and housing is virtually absent from it. In fact the only reference to housing within the report identifies the level of social housing in the area as a problem to be addressed. Frankly this is utterly insulting to the many people living in social housing in the area.’”
Ryan concluded by saying it was clear already that this report was another let-down for the North Inner City: ‘The absence of a clear strategy to address the housing crisis in the area through the provision of public housing renders the report almost redundant in itself. The problems faced by people living in the North Inner City can be only changed by tackling the economic factors that cause poverty, not glossy reports and photo ops for the Taoiseach”.