Tag Archives: Dublin Inquirer

Meanwhile…

Uncanny.

Previously: The Doors

Dublin Inquirer tweetz:

If you’re curious about how Dublin City Council councillors have voted on city issues this past term, don’t forget you can check out their votes (not all, sadly, just the ones they record electronically) at Council Tracker. #LE19

Council Tracker is a Dublin Inquirer project.

Previously:  63 Candidates On 10 Key Issues

Fair Play

Sam Tranum, of Dublin Inquirer, reports:

Today we’re launching our voter’s guide to candidates running for the 63 seats on Dublin City Council.

Using it, you can see who’s running in your local electoral area, and what they say they’ll do – if elected – on 10 key issues, from housing to climate change, cycling to green spaces. Have a browse through and see who you want to vote for on 24 May.

In fairness.

Introducing Our Voter’s Guide to the Candidates Running for Dublin City Council (Dublin Inquirer)

The Dublin Inquirer reports:

Back in November 2012, Threshold estimated that landlords were keeping deposits worth up to €2million.

Today, it estimates that the amount of tenant-deposit money being held by landlords could be €700million, a spokesperson says.

“Which is an extraordinary sum largely belonging to people of modest or moderate incomes.”

There’s still a need, they said, for a deposit scheme to make sure tenants who have done nothing wrong get their deposits back.

Still waiting for a better system for getting deposits back from landlords (Sean Finnan, The Dublin Inquirer)

Sean Finnan

Rollingnews

Screengrab of an interactive graph created by Dublin Inquirer

This morning.

In the Dublin Inquirer…

Lois Kapila reports:

Hundreds of Dublin City Council-owned homes are overcrowded, while hundreds of others remain underused, council figures suggest.

….Of the one-bedroom council homes in the Dublin City Council area, 111 have three or more people living in them.

For two-beds, 243 have six or more people living in them. For three-beds, 46 have nine or more people living in them. For four-beds, four households have 12 or more people living in them.

At the other end of the spectrum, there are homes that are emptier. For three-beds, 823 have only one person living in them. For four-beds, 113 have one person in them, and 232 have two people in them.

“The bottom line is that there are hundreds of underused or overcrowded tenancies or homes where Dublin City Council is the landlord,” Cuffe said.

…“It’s a minefield this whole issue,” says Cuffe. “We’ve seen huge controversy in the UK, where taxation was proposed on empty bedrooms. I don’t think we should go down that road.”

“But at a time when we have tens of thousands of homeless people in the city, we do have to look at a better use of the limited housing stock that we have,” he says.

Hundreds of Council Homes are Overcrowded, While Others Are Underused, Figures Show (Lois Kapila, Dublin Inquirer)

Dave Lordan writes:

Five teenagers gather at a party in a bedsit in Dunmanway, West Cork during mushroom season in 1993 – a Curehead, a couple of ravers, a punk and a mod. Only the Curehead – me, Dave Lordan – is left on this Earth in 2018.

In this six-episode podcast memoir, I will delve into each of the four dead friends’ lives, and each of their deaths, in turn – before ending with a demon-haunted climax in Gatsby’s “niteclub”.

New episodes of The Dead Friends will be released each Wednesday from 26 September to 31 October. You can get them here on the Dublin Inquirer website, or via the Dublin Inquirer Podcast on iTunes or Stitcher, or on Libsyn.

The Dead Friends, Episode 1 (Dave Lordan, Dublin Inquirer)

Full Dublin Inquirer infographic by Harry Burton here

This morning.

A reader-funded, fully-illustrated survey by Amarach Research for The Dublin Inquirer (in fairness) has revealed deep dissatisfaction with the homeless freephone service provided by the Dublin Homeless Regional Executive (run by yer wan).

What More Than 100 Homeless People Said When Surveyed About the Freephone and Hostels (Harry Burton and Lois Kapila, Dublin Inquirer)

Housing activists outside 38/39 Bolton Street in 2015

Lois Kapila, in The Dublin Inquirer, reports:

Three years ago, when housing activists stood down from their occupation of 38 and 39 Bolton Street after the council took them to court for trespassing, they didn’t feel too bad, says Séamus Farrell.

Dublin City Council had said the buildings – which it owns – would be turned into accommodation for people who were homeless. That was something they could rally behind, said Farrell.

But it hasn’t happened yet.

The two tall buildings in the north inner-city are still empty, with boarded-up windows and shuttered doors, and advertising posters plastered to the front wall.

“It’s not surprising, it’s disappointing,” says Farrell, an activist who was involved at the time. He is now among those who have taken over a Georgian building on Summerhill Parade…

Many years on, two council buildings on Bolton Street are still empty (Lois Kapila, The Dublin Inquirer)

Previously: Meanwhile, On Bolton Street

Homely

Rialto Youth Project in Rialto, Dublin 8

Cónall Thomas, in the Dublin Inquirer, writes:

Over four years, Fiona Whelan gathered stories from young people in Rialto in answer to the request: talk about a moment in your life when you felt powerful or powerless.

Many of the 60 anonymous accounts she collected had one thing in common: they touched on encounters with gardaí.

“I’d say I get stopped 20 times a month. 20 times a month just for walking around,” wrote one young man from Rialto. “I’d be walking, a Garda car would see me and stop and ask me where I’m going.”

As the project snowballed and interest grew, Whelan, an artist in residence at the Rialto Youth Project, and Jim Lawlor, the manager there, worked it into something practical: two modules that could be taught to gardaí during their training – to help them work better with children in the neighbourhood and further afield.

But while it looked for a while as if the modules might be taken up, almost a decade on they are still pushing for that to happen…

Gardaí need better training on how to handle kids in the inner-city, some say (Cónal Thomas, Dublin Inquirer)

Rialto Youth Project

Evgeny Shtorn

Evgeny Shtorn, from Russia, is a human rights activist and asylum seeker living in Ireland.

He writes in the Dublin Inquirer:

I had been looking forward to the recent Pride Parade in Dublin with excitement. Back in Russia, I had helped to organise Pride events, but had never actually taken part in a parade, as they were always banned by the authorities.

…Our group was articulating a specific issue. Our banners read, “we are here”, “queer direct provision”, and “end direct provision”.

…We were ready to march. For most of us, it was the first time in an explicitly LGBT event.

Before we could make our stand, though, we had to wait. We waited for hours for other groups to pass by – the majority were huge corporations, banks, chain shops and new media companies who used Pride to advertise.

One after another they marched, their corporate logos decorated with rainbows. Two hours later, we LGBT asylum seekers, and other LGBT community groups finally got our chance to move.

Most of those watching the parade, those we wanted to hear and see our messages so they could think about them, had already gone…

Evgeny: My first pride parade wasn’t quite what I’ve hoped for (Dublin Inquirer)

Photo:  Jose Miguel Jiminez (Dublin Inquirer)