“We have an over-reliance on the private sector, it is expensive, it is poor value for money,” says Mary Hayes, director of the Dublin Region Homeless Executive.
What more can be done to keep drivers from trying to squeeze their trucks and coaches under too-low railway bridges, causing safety risks, damage and delays?
“It looks like a public convenience … [but] it’s only a wannabee public convenience and is really just a big wooden box,” Mark Graham wrote to the council.
Northwood Estates is home to thousands, but there aren’t any bus routes running down its main thoroughfare – possibly because it’s not a public street.
Changing how people travel for short journeys has the the most potential for reducing transport emissions in Dublin, says Eoin Ahern, an energy researcher for Codema.
The airport plans to chip away at the tens of thousands of tonnes of CO2 that it emits each year, but it says it’s not really responsible for the hundreds of thousands that airplanes and car drivers emit.
Nicole Dunne, who runs a foraging business there, says the nettles are up early this year. “The winter wasn’t as cold, so they came up too early, thinking it was near the end of spring.”
In his efforts to make sure his apartment complex in Swords is secure and maintained, he’s up against a Cypriot subsidiary of a fund with more than half-a-billion euro worth of property in Ireland.
The state has long been criticised for its use of these notices, and the lack of oversight in how they are issued – particularly in a climate of poor housing and site provision for Travellers.
Buried underground are everything from aeronautical parts and food waste, to vials of blood and construction debris. Some worry that leaving it there could lead to wider environmental damage.
