Cover image for Dublin Inquirer print edition #123
"June is deeply associated with Áine, the Irish goddess of summer, fertility, love, and sovereignty, whose presence is especially felt around the midsummer season."
But the damage has been done, says Fianna Fáil Councillor Paul McAulliffe. “I’m worried about the chilling effect this will have on investment,” he says.
“We’re not taking our lead from the church, we’re taking it from advertising. So the secular icons show that,” says artist Paul Mac Cormaic.
Local residents are sceptical, wondering why the old shopping centre can’t be revived instead, and remembering all the false promises they’ve been given in the past.
This documentary weaves together candid footage and interviews to build up a story of the regeneration, exploring what was lost as the towers came down.
As Ballymun Town Centre has withered away, it has left area residents with few places to buy basics. Should Dublin City Council just build a shopping centre there itself?
Three-bedrooom houses in Dublin should ideally be at least 100 sqm, a standard the council held an Ailesbury Rd development to in September. But smaller homes are apparently okay in Poppintree, for rapid-build houses, for homeless families.
A selection of Seamus Kelly’s photographs from a decade of publishing the “Ballymun Concrete News” are on display at Axis: Ballymun until the end of March.
Activists in Ballymun are pressing for more clarity about what one of the government’s housing schemes means for them.
People working in the industry say that it was always an impossible mission to get the homes ready before Christmas.
On Monday, small groups stopped to say goodbye to the last of the Ballymun’s iconic towers, Joseph Plunkett. On Tuesday late afternoon, engineers began to demolish it.
Has the ban achieved its goals: greater diversity of tenure and a better social mix in the area? And should it remain in place?
The Ballymun Young Women’s Project has funding, staff, a location and plenty to do. But it might soon close anyway.