Taking my support of the delivery of public housing—social, cost rental and affordable purchase—as a given, in addition to this, in my time on the Council since 2020, I’ve highlighted the thousands of homes that have already worked their way through our planning system and been granted but are sitting there uncommenced.

In February 2023, it was revealed to me that across DCC’s 5 administrative areas, over 700 planning permissions that have been granted have yet to commence that could deliver over 20,000 housing units. In November 2023, the City Council confirmed that Approved Housing Bodies (AHBs) were in discussion with owners of just 7 of these sites with a view to taking them on for delivery of public housing. That needs to be significantly ramped up and we must adopt a “use it or lose it” approach to our planning permissions to stop developers sitting on sites and speculating on land.

Further, through the Dublin City Development Plan 2022-2028, effectively the City’s planning rulebook, I pushed for stricter measures to clamp down on the overconcentration of hotel developments so that city centre sites could be used for housing instead. This has already reaped a benefit where a hotel development proposed for Francis Street, Dublin 8 was struck down by planners citing overconcentration.

Since 2020, I have worked with residents and community leaders across many of the social housing flat complexes in my own area of the South West Inner City to demand that Dublin City Council takes its duty as a landlord to its tenants more seriously, especially when it comes to damp and mould conditions which pose a significant health risk.

Through the Oliver Bond Regeneration Forum, which I helped establish, I have pushed and engaged constructively with City Council Maintenance to undertake a review of all homes in particularly vulnerable locations i.e. which have boundary walls facing out onto stairwells and ends of blocks, to be targeted for enhanced work. This doesn’t mean we neglect those living in the middle of blocks, however, it just means we are targeting those residents more susceptible to weather conditions impacting the damp and mould in their homes.

Further, I worked with residents in Pimlico Flats, Tyrone Place, Dolphin House, Emmet Buildings, Basin Street, Mary Aikenhead and others to highlight the deplorable living conditions they are subjected to by Dublin City Council.

What we need and what I would push for is greater budget allocation for our housing maintenance works. Of the €7m allocated in DCC’s Capital Budget—which is not voted on, but just ‘noted’ by Full Council—only approx. €1m of that goes towards “condensation” – this is to serve the needs of the over 27,500 council homes in the city.

As part of the Budget Consultative Working Group for Budget 2024 on behalf of the Labour Party, I supported additional spending to deliver more City Council staff working across our city centre but also in our local administrative areas for street cleaning, weeding, graffiti clean up etc. We also need more public bins and I’m blue in the face asking for more of these. The Waste Management Section are very rigid on where they will and won’t put bins meaning we have total blackspots across our city without adequate public bins.

Further, I have highlighted the difficulties for those living in terraced housing across Dublin City Council when it comes to them finding suitable waste collection companies. Of the 225,000 households in the DCC area, over 93,000 of them are terraced homes according to the most recent census. New Government legislation as of January 2024 now requires households to use a brown bin for food waste, however, the for the vast majority of residents in terraced dwellings, wheelie bins aren’t an option due to a lack of space. Waste collection companies won’t give out brown bin bags for fear of foxes, seagulls etc. tearing them apart – so residents here are left stuck.

Only three Bring Centres in the entirety of Dublin City Council—Ballymun, North Strand Road, and Ringsend—allow you to bring food waste. This needs to be expanded to more of our Bring Centres, and I have called on DCC to trial run communal bins in terraced housing locations where residents can put their brown bag waste and it is collected here from waste collectors instead of house by house. This is being looked at by DCC’s ‘Beta Projects’.

Since 2020, I have consistently identified empty buildings, sites and empty homes and brought them to the attention of the Derelict Sites Section of Dublin City Council. Vacancy and dereliction is the scourge of our cities, towns and villages across this country. It absolutely sickens me to hear dog whistles and racist tropes taking about how full the country supposedly is when we know there are buildings and sites that are crumbling before our eyes that should be used for residential development.

I think of two prominent sites I identified and got onto the Derelict Sites Register — 43-50 Dolphins Barn Street and 162-165 James’s Street. Both are located opposite major hospitals and should be used to deliver housing so that our essential workers in our hospitals have somewhere decent to live. Instead, nothing happens. As a Councillor, there are limitations as to what can be done, apart from identifying the sites and asking the Council to CPO them, but through my party leader, Ivana Bacik, in the Dáil, the issue of more powers for local authorities has been consistently raised with central Government.

Taking my push an calls for more visible community policing and a more proactive rather than reactive approach from Gardai as a given, from a city council point of view, two main things I think that must be done are:

1. more and better public lighting so people feel safer walking around in dark winter evenings and at night; and

2. we need to invest in our communities, in education, our youth, outreach and diversion services, our addiction services, and importantly, our community amenities, such as sports facilities, arts and drama spaces etc. – these investments pay back tenfold when it comes to occupying our young people and giving them a positive outlet.

What we have now is a distinct lack of investment in our communities—for example, not a single full-size playing pitch in the Dublin 8 area. If we don’t invest in our young people, we are doomed to repeat intergenerational inequality and disadvantage and this creates fertile ground for drug dealing gangs and other criminal elements to prey on children and young people.

Getting people, who are able to, out of their car and onto our buses or the Luas is vital if we are to tackle our climate emissions and reduce congestion, not just in our city centre, but across our neighbourhoods and urban villages.

I support the roll out of Busconnects, however, we have to ensure that communities and local residents are informed of new changes as they are about to happen. We have to recognise that not everybody is aware of the lengthy planning processes that have gone on between the NTA and An Bord Pleanála and for most people, they will only realise change is happening when they see it in front of them—they will only realise a new bus is operating and their old one has been replaced, or that they can’t drive a certain way anymore when it confronts their daily life. That’s why it is really important, for public buy in, that we keep channels of communication open and keep communities informed of changes as they are rolling out.

Busconnects has been ongoing since before I became a Councillor in 2020, and we are seeing the plans implemented and bus routes changing on a regular basis and this is receiving some public backlash – in most instances after it has been and gone through planning. I think we need to watch for political representatives or candidates who now seek to unpick that but there also has to be room for discussion with local communities, to ask questions of why certain decisions were taken and to have them explained.

On top of actually improving the bus connections across the city, I am behind plans to reduce traffic congestion in our city centre core to make it a better place to be and spend time in. While we seek to achieve that, we must also ensure that people working in and across our city—I think of van drivers, couriers, delivery drivers, tradespeople and others—who need to get around the city centre for their livelihoods, we need to accommodate them as part of these plans.

In addition to the above on improving public transport, we have to roll out a better Active Travel Network across the city, which I fully support. Just as we are encouraging those to leave the car at home to take public transport, there are a group of people who will cycle if it is safer for them. We have to prioritise the roll out of our Active Travel Network across the city and ensure this is done equally. I highlighted the unequal allocation of investment in my own area of Dublin South Central compared to other DCC areas. Better cycling and walking infrastructure shouldn’t depend on your post code.

Community engagement and consultation is important when it comes to the roll out of these projects. In one instance along James’s Walk where Rialto and Fatima Luas is, there was a decision taken to make this street one-way for driving and to enable a two-way cycle path. This plan for this relatively small stretch of road was subject to extensive community consultation and tweaks were made along the way which brought about community buy-in. Some might well say we don’t have time to consult with communities in this level of detail along the way in the face of our climate crisis, and yes, I absolutely hear and that and would tend to agree, however, I think there are occasions when detailed consultation is required.

In Dublin 8 is one of the most progressive, open and welcoming parts of our city and of our country. But we can’t pretend that racism and hate doesn’t exist and speaking from my own privileged position as a white Irish male, I can say I have seen an uptick in racist hateful speech in my presence.

Whether that be getting a haircut in my local barber, talking to people in the community, in the local pub or wherever. I don’t think there is much value in challenging one racist view at a time and picking off a racist to have a row with—there is a time and a place for doing this—but what’s more important is creating the conditions in our society that is hostile to that speech, hostile to people thinking it is okay to speak about vulnerable minorities in such hateful ways.

That is why it is incredibly disheartening to see Sinn Féin in particular, the supposed leaders of the left in Ireland, turn their back on the hate speech legislation currently working its way through the Dáil. They voted for it and when the wind blew in a slightly different direction following the recent referendums, they decided to run in that direction.

A recent ESRI report shows that over 7 in 10 of us have a positive view of immigration. Those living in rented accommodation, more likely to be younger people and living the realities of our housing crisis, have a more positive view of immigration than those who own their home, who are more likely to be older.

We are progressive, we are open, we are tolerant and we must reclaim the narrative on these issues and not allow a tiny hateful minority pull the country rightwards as we have seen in other European countries.