For decades, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have neglected Dublin city's and county's flat communities. I am talking about inner-city flat complexes like Pearse House, Oliver Bond House, St. Michan's House and Dolphin House but also suburban schemes like Cromcastle Court in Coolock and Balgaddy in my constituency. These are strong, vibrant and resilient communities that have been utterly failed by successive Governments. So bad were the failures that in 2014, residents from 20 council housing estates supported by the Community Action Network and others took the Irish Government to the European Committee of Social Rights. After listening to all the evidence and hearing the weasel words of Government, that committee found the Government and State were in breach of Article 16. It was failing to protect the rights of families to social, legal and economic protection, including the right to provision of adequate family housing by the State. That decision in 2017 finally meant Dublin City Council started to take action, with a report in 2018 and another report in 2020. In 2021, intensive negotiations began, led by residents of these communities and Dublin City Council. Over three years of enormous effort, a regeneration and deep retrofit plan was agreed. What did Government do then? In 2025, the first application for the retrofit of Pearse House was rejected on the grounds that it would see a reduction of units because you had to amalgamate homes to meet legally required minimum standards. Then, yesterday, the second application for Oliver Bond Street flats was also rejected by a Minister who clearly does not understand the realities in these communities. I want to make it clear the false economy the Government is imposing on these communities. It is saying you cannot reduce the number of units to meet legally required minimum standards, so you have to retrofit the units as they are. However, fewer people will be allowed to live in them. That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. In fact, this is going to lead to even greater delay. When Pearse House was knocked back last April, it took until March of this year for a revised proposal to be accepted. From my own conversations with Dublin City Council, it is not clear at all that it will be able to proceed fully with the regeneration of these estates, based on the policy of the Department. What is also without doubt is that the letter from Government to Dublin City Council yesterday was deeply dishonest. It said the reason the Department cannot accept it is that there is a 38% reduction in the number of homes. However, it fails to mention is that in the Dublin City Council plan, which I have here, in order to deal with the fact there would be a reduction of units when you amalgamated two flats into one or three into two, Dublin City Council identified a brand new vacant site opposite Oliver Bond House where it would deliver an additional 43 homes. The scheme has a net gain of 15 homes, and the Minister of State's Government is saying "No" to the people of Oliver Bond House. It is utterly disgraceful. What needs to happen? The Government needs to accept it has got this wrong. It is adding insult to injury to the hardworking, rent-paying tenants in these communities. It needs to reverse its policy decision of opposing amalgamation. It needs to fully fund the adequate regeneration of these estates, and it needs to do it at a more accelerated pace than was originally agreed. What will that take? A dedicated team of staff in Dublin City Council, led by a senior official at assistant director of service grade, and a proper multimillion euro budget provided annually to deal with these issues. I had the very good fortune of being at an event earlier last year in which Gayle Cullen, one of the leading figures in Oliver Bond House, was discussing their experience of regeneration. That was before that community received the devastating news yesterday. What she said at the end of her presentation was that as a community, they were worn out, tired, fed up and living in or beside derelict blocks in awful conditions, and that it was no wonder residents did not back regeneration boards. Speaking to Gayle today, she said the news yesterday was like a death in the community. This is on this Government, and I hope we hear at some point today from Deputy Browne, the Minister who has taken the decision to refuse the funding and who is forcing these communities to continue to live in illegal, substandard accommodation. These conditions have to be reversed, the funding has to be provided and the communities in the Public Gallery today need to have the rights of everybody else to live in safe, secure and adequate homes.

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The Government refused Dublin City Council the funding for Oliver Bond House yesterday.

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That is the reality.

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He is talking down the clock and ignoring the issue.

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How about some respect for the residents who are being forced to live in Third World conditions because of the Government's refusal?

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I would really like the Minister of State to.

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Deal with the issue. Do not talk down the clock.

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We would welcome it.

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Respect is earned.

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It is the residents we want the Minister of State to listen to, not us.

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Twenty years after.

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The best boy in the class.

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The Minister of State might actually address the question in front of us.

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Which the Government then ignores. The Government then ignores and throws it in the bin.

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This is Orwellian.

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Hear, hear.

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There is the letter.

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The Minister refused the funding application from the council.

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Tell the truth, Minister.

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The Minister decided this.

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There would be 15 extra units in this plan.

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The Minister is misleading the House. He refused funding.

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Tell the truth.

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I have the letter from the Department.

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There are 15 extra homes in this proposal, a net increase.

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I have the map. Maybe the Minister could look at-----

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Just the number of people living there. Fewer people will live there under the Minister's policy.

Sentiment score: 0.04

The approach of the Minister to inner-city flat complex regeneration is fundamentally flawed. After three long years of consultation with the local community on Oliver Bond Street, Dublin City Council made a very detailed proposal. It would take 74 1930s flats and bring them up to modern standards with a loss of 28 units. It identified a brand-new site, adjacent to Oliver Bond flats, with an additional 43 units. That is a net increase of 15 homes. In addition to that, there would be a community centre. The Minister has refused funding for that. The letter was sent to the council this week. He has refused funding on the most spurious of grounds, namely, that the Department cannot accept a reduction in the number of units. What the Minister is proposing is that instead of having an adequate mix of one-, two- and three-bedroom homes in these large flat complexes, these will have to be scaled down to a large volume of studios, one-beds and some two-beds. That is going to fundamentally undermine the coherence of those housing estates. The Minister will not be able to do that across all of the blocks in Pearse House or in Oliver Bond flats. It is a fundamentally flawed approach. This policy says fewer people will live there. The units will be maintained - this fictional target - but fewer people will live there. With respect to the other schemes the Minister has mentioned, he listed off a series of regeneration schemes where communities were destroyed ten or 20 years ago, flung to the four corners of our city, and only now the Department is finally getting around to rebuilding them. The Minister's approach to this is a mistake and it is one he needs to reverse. I think he is being badly advised by the Department. He is refusing to listen to the residents who have given enormous amounts of time to this consultation. The irony is that if a private landlord was the owner of these flats, they would be in front of the Residential Tenancies Board, fined and the problems would be fixed. If an approved housing body was the landlord of these flats, it would be in front of the Residential Tenancies Board and forced to fix them. However, the Minister is refusing funding, is pursuing a failed policy and, as a consequence, thousands of people in Dublin, Cork and elsewhere will live in slum conditions. That is his policy. He can come into the House and speak for four or five minutes, having not listened to the debate, and think that might convince somebody. It does not convince us and, more importantly, it does not convince the residents in the flats he is allowing to live in squalor. He should reverse the decision, change the policy, fund the councils to fix the flats and stop misleading this House with information about what is going on on the streets of Dublin, Cork and elsewhere.

Sentiment score: -0.15