Dublin: Public Housing Project To Be Demolished

Many question the motives behind plans to raze Ireland's most infamous housing project.

1 minute read

November 5, 2003, 12:00 PM PST

By Connie Chung


"Built in the 1960s on then-remote land near the airport, to relieve housing pressure in the city centre where people were dying in collapsing tenements, Ballymun is synonymous in Ireland with all that's wrong with high-rise urban social housing....Ballymun Regeneration Limited (BRL), set up by Dublin City Council to manage a 2.5 billion euro ($2.95 billion) renewal of Ballymun, hopes to start bringing down two of the seven towers in December....They will be replaced by more low-rise city-owned housing and luxury apartments, offices, a fancy leisure centre and a hotel. That is because, in an irony of ironies, the site where Ballymun was built four decades ago to house Dublin's social outcasts has become prime real estate."

Thanks to Connie Chung

Sunday, November 2, 2003 in The Chicago Tribune

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