After the council quietly closed its mediation service, a new report highlights a growing need for mediation in the community

In February, Dublin City Council quietly wound down its own community mediation service.

It shut down the service because, for a long time, very few people were using it, the chief executive told Councillor Noelle Brown of the Social Democrats, in a reply to her written question about it at October’s monthly council meeting.

The mediation process had been a strong tool in dispute resolution for many years, the response said, but recently, demand just hadn’t been there.

That’s been the case with mediation services across the board, say those working in the area.

“I think in the run-up to Covid, I found the community mediation was really, really busy, and Covid seemed to just stymie that,” said Austin Kenny, a professional mediator with over 20 years experience working in community, commercial and family cases. 

“Since then, there's been a slow flow of cases,” he said.

But the need for such services is still there, says a new report by the Ballymun-based Community Law & Mediation, which launched last week. 

Mediation, done right, can ease community tensions, prevent homelessness, support young people, and help resolve complex social conflicts, it says.

“Mediation is needed and will always be needed because people fight,” said Kenny, at the launch at the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (IHREC) office.

“And largely speaking, people are really not good at it. All of us are really poor at conflict,” Kenny said. “We just don't do it very well.”

The council and beyond

Mediation is a form of negotiation whereby an independent third party helps people solve a problem that they can’t by themselves, says the report from Community Law & Mediation.

It’s voluntary and aims for mutually acceptable outcomes rather than legally imposed decisions, says the report, written by Heidi Riley, an adjunct research fellow in the School of Politics and International Relations at UCD. 

Mediation can be used across many settings – from family and community disputes to workplace disagreements, commercial issues, and other civic conflicts.

Dublin City Council’s estate management strategy, which runs from 2022 to 2027, still mentions a route for mediation, when neighbours in social homes aren’t getting along.

It isn’t suitable in cases of serious anti-social behaviour, the strategy says, but maybe for less severe complaints. 

Neighbours first go to area housing staff, it says. “If it is decided by Area Housing staff that mediation is the appropriate course of action in a case, they may make a referral to the Mediation Service.”

In her question to the council about the service, Brown, the Social Democrats councillor, said she thought the council’s mediation service had closed two years earlier. 

So, nowadays, “many tenants feel lost and do not know where to turn”. So they report minor things to the council, she said.

If tenants knew of the availability of mediation services through the Community Law & Mediation, they could go there rather than to the council and it would help solve minor conflicts, she said.

The council should advertise this with tenants, said Brown.

The reply from the council executive said it had actually closed its mediations service just this February. 

Not only had referrals been low, but also many had been unsuitable for mediation, the response said. Both sides wouldn’t agree to it, or the conflict had already escalated, it said.

Council staff departures meant they didn’t have enough qualified people to run it too, the response said.

The council and beyond

Community-focused mediation has been largely deprioritised in comparison to family mediation, for separated couples say, or commercial mediation, the new report says.

Yet it is community mediation – including conflict coaching, restorative practices and violence prevention initiatives – that can prevent small tensions from escalating into major conflicts.

That mediation is confidential has been a huge barrier to its promotion, said Kenny, the mediator.

Indeed, cases have to be confidential, says Elizabeth Devine, a policy and communications manager with Community Law & Mediation, by email.

But there are countless success stories that must remain anonymous, she says. 

For example, neighbouring families in semi-detached housing, stuck in escalating tensions over household noise, she says.

Each family met separately with mediators. One described disturbance from the sound of a heat pump, visitors and children. 

The other party outlined how they had tried to quieten the household, with a sound engineer confirming noise levels were within regulations.

After meeting together, they reached an agreement on communication, advance notice, and using email or text to share information calmly and avoid unnecessary conflict, Devine says.

Stories like this need to be shared as widely as possible, said mediator Andrea O’Neill, at last week’s launch. 

The process may still be a mystery to many, she says, but should be sold better.

Imagine somebody driving in to work who has left two teenagers at home who were screaming at each other over something trivial, says O’Neill. 

And a voice on the radio talking about mediation asks, “Are you sick of walking on eggshells?” That person is going to listen, says O’Neill.

“We need to identify the need, the specific need. We talk to the need, and that's how you get people to use mediation,” she says.

When, and when not

The effectiveness of mediation depends heavily on who delivers it and how, the report says.

Mediation works best when it integrates specialist knowledge – whether that’s experience with young people, with new communities, with Travellers, or with survivors of trauma, it says.

Respondents working with Travellers, refugees and asylum seekers – interviewed for the report – stressed that trust grows when mediators are drawn from within their own communities.

Yet funding for training in-community mediators is limited, the report says. 

Many individuals who could be excellent mediators mistakenly believe they are ineligible because of lack of formal education, or disability, it says.

The Mediation Institute of Ireland places no such barriers on training but the perception persists – and this should be challenged, Riley says.

The research also makes it clear that mediation may not be appropriate in some cases – especially when there is a history of domestic violence, or a severe power imbalance.

Women’s Aid, who took part in the research, stressed the dangers of encouraging mediation in such situations.

At the same time, some organisations worried that blanket bans on mediation in any case involving past domestic violence may overlook situations where, with proper “vulnerability assessment” and multi-services partnership, the process could be safely facilitated.

But to do so responsibly would require resources many organisations do not have, the report says.

A broader “vulnerability analysis” – including trauma history, disability, or the intersection of identities such as LGBTQI+, Travellers or refugees – is often missing. Important risks can go unnoticed, Riley writes.

Family breakdown, she explains, is one of the leading causes of homelessness, often driven by overcrowding, financial pressures, and intergenerational conflicts.

An interviewee working in legal and homelessness services noted that some local authorities suggest mediation as a way to “resolve household relationship breakdowns”.

But in some cases, mediation has been presented as a “take the mediation or lose benefits” requirement, communicated through brief letters that give little explanation of what mediation involves or how to access it.

One frontline worker described how local authorities have instructed people to “go back to where you have been, regardless of what has occurred there, sometimes even domestic violence”.

These authorities, the report claims, may then suggest mediation as the path to resolving the issue, rather than removing the person from a potentially dangerous environment.

This practice, Riley says, is sharply at odds with mediation ethics, which requires the process to be voluntary and with informed consent.

“Used in such an unethical manner, mediation then has the opposite effect – instead of preventing homelessness, failing to take up an offer of mediation becomes part of the cause of homelessness or can perpetuate dangerous living conditions,” says Riley, in the report.

Across organisations supporting refugees, asylum seekers and migrants, the report notes consistent barriers to accessing mediation.

For individuals concerned about immigration status, being referred to mediation by Gardaí over a neighbourhood dispute can cause concerns about confidentiality and the process’s independence.

To build trust, some organisations speak about mediation in less formal terms – describing it as “having a conversation” – yet without funding for more interpreters or mediation-trained staff, organisations remain limited in what they can offer, the report says.

Meanwhile, Traveller Mediation Services (TMS) has historically delivered successful programmes, including mediation training for incarcerated men.

One initiative was so effective that participants gained “confidence to speak out in public” and even began co-facilitating future programmes, the report says, but TMS cannot sustain such work due to lack of resources, despite clear evidence of impact.

On the streets

There are already moves in some parts of the city to pilot mediation services in new ways.

Riley’s report points to what are known as “violence interruption” programmes in Glasgow in Scotland, and in Chicago in the United States.

Both see trained mediators on the streets and in communities to respond to low-level disputes before they escalate.

In July, the Canal Communities Local Drug and Alcohol Taskforce – active in Rialto, Inchicore and Bluebell – launched a new strategy that centres on community-based public safety. 

Authored by independent Senator Lynn Ruane, it suggests a community-based team of violence interrupters, outreach workers and trauma-informed specialists who are embedded in the neighbourhood. 

Their role would be to identify tensions early, mediate conflicts, and step in before violence escalates – a shift away from reactive models of policing.

Rather than relying solely on Garda intervention, the plan emphasises addressing the underlying causes of violence – including poverty, trauma, addiction and lack of safe spaces.

Interrupters would maintain a highly visible presence in public spaces where conflict is most likely to emerge, offering de-escalation, relationship-building and ongoing engagement.

Crucially, these workers would be local or deeply connected to the area, making them trusted, “credible messengers” capable of influencing behaviour and reducing retaliatory violence.

The strategy has just been granted €142,500 in funding from the Community Safety Fund. 

Riley said after the launch of the report last week that she’ll be keeping a close eye on how that strategy progresses.

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.