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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
38 April 2015
I
N 2009 the then Lord Mayor of
Dublin, Eibhlin Byrne, officially
opened the new apartment blocks
at York Street, Dublin. It was hailed, by
some, as a flagship of social housing and
regeneration. Before this, York Street
housing had magnificent spaces outdoor
and indoor – substantial back gardens,
ample space in bedrooms and good-
floor-to-ceiling heights. Residents had
been housed in a dilapidated, though
distinguished, Georgian former tene-
ment block with fire-safety issues. Had
that block been refurbished and made
safe it would have safeguarded the aspi-
rations of an entire community.
Instead, what happened was the
perpetration of the architecture of con-
tainment and an ‘othering off’ – the
erasure of the spirit of York Street apart-
ments. The very concept of these blocks
was constrained: by the necessity to
sell more than half of York Street at its
east end to the plutocratic St Stephen’s
Green-anchored Royal College of Sur-
geons in Ireland (RCSI) for swanky new
college facilities.
During the negotiations between the
residents and tenants of York Street
which began around 2007 Sinn Féin’s
Daithi Doolan was the representative
in the area. There were other Sinn Féin
supporters on the ground, and the com-
munity felt confident that they were
going to get a good deal, though they
might have been suspicious about a col-
lege of doctors that had built a car park
at York Street some years previously
against the wishes of the local people
purely for financial reasons, generating
large-scale vehicle emissions to the det-
riment of community health.
The sweetener for the deal was the
use of the RCSI sports and commu-
nity facilities. The rooftop of the RCSI
extension was to be in the form of an all-
weather pitch and its facilities were to
be shared with the entire community in
compensation for the lost green space
and amenities. However, in fact these
amenities were eliminated by stealth
as the community interest was subordi-
nated to that of the well-got RCSI. The
all-weather pitch was removed through
a variation of the plan. And the use of
the facilities as a right was eliminated
– becoming instead part of an elusive
‘outreach program’ whereby the commu-
nity got access to the facility only when
it was not in use. In partial return the
RCSI gave Dublin City Council around
€400,000 of community-gain money,
whose destination is uncertain, and
there will be no messiness of integration
with the locals for the men in suits and
stethoscopes. All this has eradicated the
possibility that the RCSI might ever inte-
grate with the community of York St and
Mercer St.
It was tragically clear in 2009 when
the new apartments opened that the res-
idents had had no idea that there was to
be no all-weather pitch or sports facil-
ity for them.
Moreover, as to the new apartments,
from the outside all looked well but from
the inside there were many concerns:
safety of windows, tap-water overheat-
ing, much-vaunted roof gardens quickly
closed down by Dublin City Council
(DCC) as unsafe.
Six years on and the RCSI has another
grandiose plan. It is going to build
another much bulkier building at York
Street with – again – no rooftop facility,
this time abetted by newish local Sinn
Féin Councillor, Chris Andrews. A recent
offer of around €3,000 each in compen-
sation to the residents at York Street has
been dwarfed by offers of more than
twice that amount made to residents
in Cuffe Lane at the rear of York Street
who own their own homes and therefore
seem to be treated more seriously by all
concerned.
The always stuffy but greedy, morally
and aesthetically bereft, hawkish and
cynical RCSI and the dead hand of Dublin
City Council with the naïve support of
deal-making local Sinn Féin councillors
in 2009 and again in 2015 underpinned
the dynamic of the take-out.
The property-playing RCSI, which
has over several generations colonised
much of the St Stephen’s Green area with
characteristic mediocrity is now insist-
ing that all the deals it did with the DCC
tenants are confidential. While some of
the residents in the area seem to be con-
tent, a number are not, as they face in to
two years of dawn-to-dusk pile-driving,
dust and heavy-machinery movements,
and are seeking legal advice.
Sinn Féin’s Chris Andrew’s has been
rather coy on the matter in keeping with
the ethos of his new party. None of the
other local councillors was aware that
negotiations were taking place. Many
residents now feel they were stampeded
into signing the RCSI secret documents,
especially when their private neighbours
have been paid substantially more than
they have and Chris Andrews hadn’t
informed them of this.
When I raised the matter at the DCC
in a motion that called for a guideline
protocol for major compensation for
DCC tenants, Andrews came over oddly
uncomfortable.
He should have been wholeheartedly
in support of this motion, but the truth
is that Mr Andrews is busy being in sup-
port of the RCSI, illustrating the journey
the Shinners have travelled. They have
aided and abetted the rape of a vulner-
able community and its assets. •
Council tenants were done out of greenery and sports facilities by the Royal College
of Surgeons. By Mannix Flynn
Doctors rob York Street
The rooftop
of the RCSI
extension
was to be an
all-weather
pitch shared
with the
community in
compensation
for the lost
amenities, but
the amenities
were
eliminated
“
POLITICS York Street
York St:
what we lost
