O’Devaney Gardens - Now Let’s Do It Right!
The O’Devaney Gardens scandal took a predictable turn today when Eoghan Murphy confirmed that there was no funding in place for the ‘affordable rental’ element of the ‘plan’ that was adopted by Dublin City Council on November 4th. According to Murphy the future of the entire development now hangs in the balance - which is no bad thing.
Under the November 4th ‘plan’, 30% of the new development was to be ‘affordable rental’ housing that would be managed by an Approved Housing Body. Despite the fact that the ‘plan’ included no AHB partner and no funding stream for the almost 250 relevant homes it still got the green light from Fine Gael, Fianna Fail, Labour, The Green Party and the Social Democrats.
A cynic - or anyone that understands how these Gombeen party’s operate - could reasonably conclude that they voted for the plan in the full knowledge that Murphy would refuse funding for the ‘affordable rental’ homes.
And in the full knowledge that such a refusal would result in the relevant 250 homes being returned to the private developer Bartra Capital which would then sell them for maximum profit on the open market.
Berite Ahern and former Fianna Fail Councillor turned property developer, Bernard McNamara.
It is now heading for thirty years since the idea of regenerating O’Devaney Gardens first emerged. After many false dawns, the developer Bernard McNamara was eventually selected to redevelop the site in a ‘Public Private Partnership’ with Dublin City Council during the Celtic Tiger era.
But in September 2008, McNamara walked away from his commitments to O’Devaney and four other publicly-owned housing developments around Dublin. The hopes and dreams of many hundreds of families across the five communities were once again put on hold.
The entire O’Devaney Gardens scandal is a damning indictment of the bankrupt ideology of the political establishment and the gross incompetence of senior management within the civil and public services.
Even today, after thirty years of failures and in the middle of the worst housing crisis since the foundation of the state, the political establishment continues to cling to a private-developer-led model for the redevelopment of O’Devaney Gardens.
The O’Devaney Gardens site should be used for a flagship development in a new system of Universal Public Housing.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. There is still time for Dublin City Council, with the support of the state, to regenerate O’Devaney Gardens as a flagship development in a new system of UP Housing.
The state has the finances, legal powers and expertise to directly develop over 800 homes on the O’Devaney site - homes that could then be rented for generations to come at an affordable rent to a mixture of low, middle and high income tenants.
The only thing that is missing is the political will to make it happen. Eoghan Murphy’s statement today potentially opens a window for the people of Dublin to build pressure on him and the rest of the political establishment to do the right thing with O’Devaney. For our part we in Éirígí are willing to play our part in fighting for O’Devaney and every other piece of public land.