The doors of the two-storey blocks at St Anne's Court are now boarded over. All doors, that is, but three.
The patter of playing children mixes with the rustle of full trees and the hushed traffic from the nearby Howth Road.
The beat of a young teenager’s basketball marks a steady rhythm as he potters around his driveway.
St Anne’s Court Senior Citizen’s Complex, owned by Dublin City Council, sits amongst it all.
The overgrown lawn ripples with green grass struggling for room among the encroaching golden weeds.
Five two-storey blocks, with 61 bedsits among them, are lined up beside one another – each door is now boarded over.
All doors, that is, but three.
On 11 February, 2022, residents of the complex each received a letter from the St Anne’s Court Residents’ Association informing them that the council had secured funding for the regeneration of St Anne's Court.
It said the council plans to demolish each existing unit, replacing them with “state of the art one-bedroom apartments”.
“Dublin City Council has requested that each of us give some consideration to a preferred complex/area for the duration of the construction,” the letter said.
Since then, the council has kept moving ahead.
Councillors granted planning permission in May 2024 for the new replacement complex with 102 one-bed homes, designed by Grafton Architect.
And, Dublin City Council has gradually moved tenants out – but not quite all of them.
At Monday’s meeting of the North Central Area Committee, councillors were asked to approve the council giving a site at St Anne's Court for an ESB substation, required for the redevelopment.
Alison Field, a Labour Party councillor, took the opportunity to ask about the remaining tenants, who had not yet been “decanted”, or moved out, of St Anne’s Court.
“We have reduced significantly both the number of tenants and people who are waiting for additional part five units [social homes], which they've actually accepted,” said Mick Carroll, local area manager for Donaghmede/Clontarf.
He said that there is only one, or possibly two tenants, who are continuing to refuse to move.
Although this is worrying for the council, he said, they will continue to make offers of what he called the “crème de la crème of social housing” to them or to their representatives.
Philip Power, a housing manager with the council, said that while there are currently three people left, two are waiting for offers of “Part V” social homes in Raheny – meaning those that are provided as part of big private developments.
And one person has refused two offers, he said. “But we’re actively engaging with him.”
The committee’s chair, Fianna Fáil Councillor Daryl Barron, asked Power what the next steps were should that person keep refusing.
“We'll keep actively engaging with them. We will provide other kinds of mechanisms to kick in there, the likes of mediation and all that sort of stuff. We'll do everything in our power to try and facilitate this person,” said Power.
On Thursday morning, Michael Harraghy, the man who the council indicated is the last one refusing to leave, was chatting outside his door to his remaining neighbours – Jim Howlin, who lives directly next door, and Thomas Leahy, who lives in the block behind.
Howlin rubbishes the idea that he and Leahy have agreed to move. Now 88, Howlin says two places he was offered were not suitable.
His car is parked metres from his ground floor door at St Anne’s Court, which, he says, is vital for him. One place the council offered him was on a sixth or seventh floor in Belmayne, he says.
Also, Howlin says he is soon due to start medical treatment, and the idea of moving to a new location, further from his GP and chemist, is extremely daunting.
That question of hold-outs in St Anne’s Court was raised at a meeting of the North Central Area Committee in February.
Carroll, the council area manager, said that one gentleman didn’t want to move because he wanted to be near his GP.
But, when it was pointed out to him that the council could provide a social home across the road from his GP, he was “perfectly happy to do it”.
Howlin believes this was in reference to him. “Lies and more lies,” he says.
Leahy, who has been living in St Anne’s Court for 20 years, says he was only “half offered” one place, but that it was not suitable.
The men say they were assured of tenancies for life when they moved in.
At the February council meeting, Carroll had alluded to that. “It was a local authority tenancy for life. But at the same time, it’s not a continuous life, if you know what I mean,” he said.
The three men say they do not know why it was decided that St Anne's Court must be totally demolished, rather than fixed up or extended– that it was never explained to them.
The council has not yet responded to a question asking about this.
But a council feasibility study from April 2020, included in the council’s planning application, says that the site had been chosen as one that could be made much more dense – in other words, fit more homes.
It laid out options for retrofitting, adding a floor and extensions, or for demolition and rebuild. It says that the homes needed at least a deep retrofit which would have to, because they are 25sqm, include knocking two flats to make one – but that route would decrease the number of homes, it said.
Barron, the Fianna Fáil councillor, said that detenanting homes is always a challenge.
As he sees it though, the stand-off is slowing down the development of new extra homes, especially now solicitors are involved, he said, on the phone. “I’d be very concerned around how long that’s going to take.”
On 11 August 2023, Harraghy received a letter from the Kilbarrack Area Housing Office of Dublin City Council.
It informed him that “serious complaints” had been received by the office regarding his tenancy, and called him to a meeting.
“If Dublin City Council forms the opinion that there is substance to these complaints then Dublin City Council will consider the serving of a Tenancy Warning or the initiation of Legal Proceedings for the recovery of your dwelling, in accordance with the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2014,” the letter said.
At that point, Harraghy says he engaged a solicitor, and through them requested details of the complaints that were deemed serious enough to warrant the threat of eviction.
He says the council failed to provide those details, and he has not heard anything relating to the letter since.
Harraghy says he felt like he was being unjustly branded some sort of a criminal, something he finds deeply upsetting.
Leahy says that some neighbours were in their 90s, with different medical needs, and had no desire to move whatsoever, including one woman who had been there for 35 years.
“I never thought myself that after 20 years I’d be going anywhere either,” Leahy says.
“They broke up an elderly community that was depending on one another,” Howlin says.
On Tuesday, Harraghy received a call from a resident who had recently moved out. They were asking how to set-up their TV and box, which Harraghy says he used to help his neighbours with.
“I’d need to be looking at it,” Harraghy said.
While Harraghy moved into his home in 2009, he says, he was forced to make some alterations to the inside in 2016 in order to make it suitable for him.
He broke his right hip, leaving him on crutches, he says.
While he was on crutches, he says, someone on a skateboard knocked him down, breaking his left arm – where he now has 17 screws.
Shortly thereafter, he was sent for a hip replacement, which went wrong, he says, leaving one leg shorter by over half an inch.
This is all compounded by a heart condition, he says.
His kitchen had to be fitted so that everything is navel height, as he cannot stretch or lean.
He also fitted his shower to be more accessible for him with a shower seat, railings.
Dublin City Council told him by letter in May 2016, that while he was free to make the alterations, the costs must be borne by him.
He says he is insisting that any location he moves to, must include the specific accommodations that are in his current dwelling – and that he still wants the council to pay for the original work he did nine years ago.
There is currently a window at the side of his bed, which he says he needs due to a condition involving sudden, rapid decreases in oxygen levels. This is another essential, he says, that must be in any future living space.
Howlin and Leahy, with their own various needs and concerns, say they and Harraghy stand united.
“We’re like the three musketeers,” Howlin says, laughing.
At Monday’s North Central Area Committee meeting, Carroll said that tenants were being given “absolute cast iron guarantee, confirmation that they can return to a tenancy in St Anne's Court once the redevelopment has been completed”.
A shared concern of Harraghy, Howlin and Leahy is, they say, that if they leave, when they eventually return, that the council will have sold the complex to a private developer or housing charity.
This, they say they fear, will leave their right to tenancy less secure than if their landlord was the council.
There’s no sign that the council plans to transfer the complex to a private developer.
But, they say, nobody has given them any assurances to the contrary.
Several councillors raised their concerns at Monday’s meeting for the well-being of, what they thought was, the one person who is refusing to be decanted and thanked the council officials for their work on the matter.
The conversation at the meeting concluded with councillors approving the disposal of the site at Saint Anne's Court for the ESB substation, as requested by council officials.
Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.
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