Too many people are kept in their cells between 19 and 24 hours a day, says chief prison inspector
"It really is an absolutely critical issue," says Mark Kelly.
Dublin City Council would sell the site to developer Glenveagh, which would agree to build 853 homes there, which would all be social and affordable, say officials. But what does affordable mean?
But the homes would still be built by a private developer, instead of by Dublin City Council, as councillors had wanted when they rejected the last plan for the site.
Empower the Family wants to provide affordable homes and childcare for students leaving care who are mums. It’s looking for a council site in Ballymun to start out.
Since last February, councillors in a cross-party working group have met, to thrash out what a new model for public housing for the city should look like.
“It doesn’t represent value for money,” says Sinn Féin TD and housing spokesperson Eoin Ó Broin.
Councillors face a choice: to sell the land, perhaps, and use the money for much-needed community facilities. Or to keep the land, perhaps, for much-needed affordable or social homes.
Early – and provisional – estimates from Dublin City Council put average cost rents for St Michael’s Estate at €1,300. But there are ways to bring that down.
Part of the discussion focused on why the council had opted for affordable homes to sell, rather than to rent – and whether it was possible to revisit that.
Here’s some of what came up when talk turned to housing at July’s monthly meeting of Dublin City Council: affordable purchase, O’Devaney Gardens, and a new housing committee chair.
The CoHousing Here! event in mid-June combines policy talks with workshops, successful examples from elsewhere and lessons from Ireland so far.
Dublin city councillors met recently to talk about who the council should prioritise if more people apply to buy “affordable” homes than there are affordable homes to buy.
Earlier this year we asked our readers what issues they wanted candidates running for Dublin City Council to talk about. Supplying homes was the issue they mentioned most often.