{"id":482148,"date":"2026-05-13T06:57:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T06:57:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/482148\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T06:57:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T06:57:16","slug":"two-of-the-kids-cant-stay-overnight-mother-of-seven-on-her-overcrowded-council-flat-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/482148\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Two of the kids can\u2019t stay overnight\u2019: Mother of seven on her overcrowded council flat \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Standing in her maisonette in south Dublin<\/a>, Janice Maguire points to the small double bed she shares with three of her young sons. <\/p>\n

\u201cTwo of them [aged seven and five] are down the bottom of the bed, and then myself and the youngest [aged four] are up here,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

Maguire (39) lives in the two-bedroom home on Lissadel Road in Drimnagh with her seven children. The maisonettes, built in the early 1950s and operated by Dublin City Council<\/a>, are flats with units at ground and first-floor level and gardens on either side. <\/p>\n

Maguire\u2019s 18-year-old daughter shares the other bedroom with her 12-year old brother, with his single bed stacked up against the wall during the daytime to give the family more space. Clothes are dried on a rack in the narrow hallway between the rooms. <\/p>\n

\u201cTwo of the kids can\u2019t stay overnight with me because there\u2019s no room,\u201d says Maguire. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not good for the kids not to be with their mother. My eldest son (19) stays with my sister and my other son (15) stays with his grandmother. Otherwise they would be sleeping on the couch.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maguire and three of her children were awarded damages against the local authority in the Circuit Civil Court in 2016. Her barrister told the court Maguire and her children had suffered \u201crecurring respiratory illness\u201d due to damp and mould in their home. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf you don\u2019t leave the windows open, the green mould comes back in the corners of the rooms,\u201d she says. \u201cThe council came out to fix the dampness but it just keeps coming back.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"JaniceJanice Maguire at home in the Lissadel Road maisonette in Drimnagh, Dublin. Photograph: Dara Mac D\u00f3naill \"KitchenKitchen unit at a Lissadel Road maisonette in Drimnagh, Dublin. Photograph: Dara Mac D\u00f3naill <\/p>\n

Despite that persistent issue, Maguire says the biggest problem she and her family face is overcrowding. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou try to keep it as clean as you can but it\u2019s constantly crowded,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not as if I\u2019m asking Dublin City Council for a mansion, an extra bedroom would be grand, even convert the attic.\u201d <\/p>\n

Maguire says she has been on a transfer list for a four- or five-bedroom home for 14 years. She pays \u20ac108 in rent a week. <\/p>\n

The Lissadel Road maisonettes are not on the council\u2019s housing regeneration programme, it says, but maintenance works have been carried out over recent years, such as external and roof insulation, new windows and doors and the installation of mechanical ventilation. <\/p>\n

Councillor Daith\u00ed Doolan has recently been doing door-to-door surveys of council homes around the Dublin 10 and 12 areas. The Sinn F\u00e9in representative says he has received \u201chundreds\u201d of responses from residents in Davitt House, Bernard Curtis House and the Bluebell and Lissadel Road maisonettes. Problems with damp, mould, rodents, leaks, broken toilets and windows are raised frequently. <\/p>\n

\"SinnSinn F\u00e9in councillor Daith\u00ed Doolan at Lissadel Road maisonettes in Drimnagh, Dublin. Photograph: Dara Mac D\u00f3naill <\/p>\n

Doolan says there needs to be a \u201chuge injection\u201d of Government funding into the maintenance and regeneration of local authority units across the city. <\/p>\n

Dublin City Council manages more than 29,000 social homes with about 68,000 tenants. It announced plans eight years ago to regenerate more than 6,000 of the city\u2019s oldest and most dilapidated flats under a 15-year plan to raise social housing standards.<\/p>\n

The council was the subject of a ruling from the European Committee of Social Rights in 2017 over the poor condition of some of its older flats complexes. The Strasbourg-based committee found the human rights of tenants had been breached because of a failure to provide them with adequate housing.<\/p>\n

Doolan says the Government is pursuing a \u201cone-size-fits-all\u201d policy when it comes to local authority housing. He says this does not take into account the fact that Dublin has the highest concentration of such housing and the oldest stock. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe get the same amount of money for maintenance per unit as counties such as Clare and Kerry, and that simply doesn\u2019t work. Dublin needs adequate funding to carry out essential works on our properties to make sure people have decent, quality housing,\u201d he adds. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe need the Government to recognise the level and concentration of poor quality housing, and that needs to be treated differently than the response to other more rural-based local authorities.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Department of Housing<\/a> earlier this month said it could no longer support<\/a> the council\u2019s proposal for the regeneration of Oliver Bond House in the south inner city \u2013 one of Dublin\u2019s largest, oldest and most dilapidated flat complexes. <\/p>\n

The council\u2019s plan would have seen 74 smaller flats across three blocks amalgamated to make 46 larger homes, but the department said it could not back such a \u201clarge reduction in homes during a housing crisis<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n

Oliver Bond House is one of a small number of council flat complexes built in the 1930s by renowned city architect Herbert Simms. The complex, and others such as Pearse House and Markievicz House, are protected structures and cannot readily be demolished and rebuilt to modern living standards.<\/p>\n

Some \u20ac50 million a year is set aside specifically for regeneration projects that require refurbishment and remediation works, according to Minister for Housing James Browne<\/a>, who said funding for such projects was at \u201crecord levels\u201d. <\/p>\n

The Minister pointed to \u201csignificant spending\u201d on Dublin projects such as the demolition and rebuilding of homes at St Michael\u2019s Estate, O\u2019Devaney Gardens, St Teresa\u2019s Gardens, Dominick Street and Dolphin House.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe funding stands available for the regeneration of Oliver Bond House,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat the department cannot stand over is a reduction in the number of homes. We will not fund a reduction in the number of homes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Former chief justice Frank Clarke, who chairs the Oliver Bond Regeneration Forum, said the rejection of the project as currently proposed meant there would be larger numbers of studio and one-bedroom flats, which would be a regressive outcome for the community. <\/p>\n

\u201cI personally think it\u2019s the wrong decision,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Lorcan Sirr<\/a>, senior lecturer in housing at the Technological University Dublin, says the council should be trusted to develop their housing units. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe loss of 28 flats in the context of a total housing output of probably 40,000 units this year seems to be a very weak basis on which to refuse permission to redevelop,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe other thing is, if the department can refuse permission to [Dublin City Council] to redevelop it, that says to me that ultimately the department are responsible for the conditions there. If they weren\u2019t responsible, they shouldn\u2019t have any business refusing it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Standing in her maisonette in south Dublin, Janice Maguire points to the small double bed she shares with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":482149,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[9,10,139653,8753,52,784,30502,18,13,14,6,8752,19,17,4770,11,12,200190,15,16,5,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-482148","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-daithi-doolan","11":"tag-department-of-housing-local-government-and-heritage","12":"tag-dublin","13":"tag-dublin-city-council","14":"tag-dublin-12","15":"tag-eire","16":"tag-featured-news","17":"tag-featurednews","18":"tag-headlines","19":"tag-housing-crisis","20":"tag-ie","21":"tag-ireland","22":"tag-james-browne","23":"tag-latest-news","24":"tag-latestnews","25":"tag-lorcan-sirr","26":"tag-main-news","27":"tag-mainnews","28":"tag-news","29":"tag-top-stories","30":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116565970461119008","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=482148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482148\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/482149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=482148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=482148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=482148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}