Ballymun Community Action Programme

Ballymun A Summary Intoduction

Ballymun is a public housing scheme that was built in the late sixties and early seventies at a time when there were massive shortages in both public and private housing in Dublin. As the only tower-block development ever undertaken by the government of the Republic, Ballymun represents a once-off experiment in building mass public housing in Ireland.

The original vision for Ballymun was that it would be a state-of-the-art and ultra-modern town within the city limits. Indeed, the Government's vision of Ballymun was as a flagship project in the increasingly industrialised economy of Ireland and as a symbol of Ireland's evolution into a modern European state.

The original plans for this “new town” included the entire infrastructure that a large town might feature - shops, cinemas, leisure facilities, doctors clinics, and so on. In the event, the only shops that were built were in the centrally located Shopping Centre, and it took a sustained campaign by the local community to ensure that the promised swimming pool was built (again in the Shopping Centre) almost ten years after the housing phase was completed. By the mid-1970's, it was apparent that Ballymun was not living up to the least of the expectations that the Government and the public may have had.By the late 1990's, the Government had conceded that the great social housing experiment in Ballymun had failed and that the problems associated with this failure needed radical solutions.

Community and Voluntary Activity

There are a wide variety of community and voluntary groups in Ballymun that have been established over the years by local people to tackle the social and economic problems in the area. CAP currently has over 120 groups and individual community workers on our mailing list and these groups are working on every area of concern to the community.

The Physical Environment

Ballymun lies on the north of Dublin city and has the distinction of being the largest high-rise public housing complex ever built in the south of Ireland. The estate consists of a mix of 2,814 flats in 4-, 8-, and 15- storey blocks along with 2,400 houses concentrated in an area of 1.5 square miles.

A consistent lack of investment in the maintenance and development of Ballymun over 25 years led to serious degeneration of the physical environment. A pilot project to refurbish one 15-storey and two 8-storey blocks of flats was initiated in 1987 and completed in 1993. By 1996, on the basis of the evaluation of the pilot phase, the decision had been taken to demolish the remaining flats and build low-rise housing on-site.

The Regeneration of Ballymun

The announcement of the decision to demolish the flats was accompanied by promises to regenerate the community as well as replace the housing stock. In 1997, Dublin Corporation established Ballymun Regeneration Limited to undertake the planning and implementation of the regeneration programme. The planned regeneration of Ballymun offers the opportunity to rectify many mistakes made in the first attempt and to learn from mistakes made in numerous other “satellite towns” where large concentrations of public housing without supporting infrastructure have led to the development of sprawling ghettos of serious disadvantage.

Current Social Profile

The last 15 years have seen increasing investment of Government and European resources in attempts to address the social and economic problems in Ballymun. The current demographic profile of the population of the area reveals why this kind of investment has been necessary and why it is necessary to continue to increase investment over the foreseeable future.

Population

The population of Ballymun has been in decline since the start of the 1980s, a feature shared by many other older, more settled areas of Dublin although the level of decline has been greater in Ballymun. Between 1981 and 1991, the population was reduced by 22% to 17,045 people. Population decline slowed between 1991 and 1996 when the Census revealed 16,566 people living in the area, a decrease of 2.8% on the 1991 figure. It is worth noting, however, that Ballymun Job Centre and the Ballymun Partnership estimate that there is a “floating” population of approximately 3,000 people living in Ballymun who do not show up in Census figures. This suggests that there are approximately 19,500 people living in Ballymun.

As noted by a 1997 Work Research Centre (WRC) report on the social and economic status of Ballymun, population decline can indicate significant social changes. It appears from the Census data that the most significant social changes in Ballymun are the decrease in actual numbers of young people between 1991 and 1996 and the increase in numbers of lone parent families in the same period.

A detailed analysis of population changes between 1991 and 1996 shows that every age cohort has decreased over this period but there has been a particularly noticeable decrease in the numbers of young adults and children living in the area. This decline in numbers of young people suggests the out-movement of two-parent families from Ballymun, which is supported by two other statistics from the 1996 Census data.

Gender Profile

Firstly, there is a wide and untypical variation in the numbers of women as compared to men in different age cohorts as outlined in the following table. As can be seen from the following table, a normal gender balance (i.e. about 50/50) in terms of numbers applies to the population up to the age of 19.Within the age range 20 to 49, however, the gender profile is such that in every five-year age cohort, the numbers of women sharply exceed the numbers of men. This is particularly true of the cohort aged 25 to 29.

Age
Male

Female

Total

0-4 years 997 1012 2009

5-9 years 930 890 1820

10-14 years 850 724 1574

15-19 years 830 847 1677

20-24 years 795 970 1765

25-29 years 690 1003 1693

30-39 years 826 1064 1890

40-49 years 709 859 1568

50-64 years 1016 1047 2063

64 years + 228 279 507

Total 7871 8695 16566

The second set of statistics that illuminate the changing gender profile of Ballymun are those revealing significant changes in household structure. Between 1991 and 1996, the total number of households increased from 4,828 to 5,044. Within this increase, there has been what the WRC describe as a “substantial shift” in the types of households in the area.

Household Structure

In 1991, 42% of all households were made up of couples with their children, including a small number with other household members as well. At the same time, just over 28% of all households were headed by lone parents. In 1991, this was an extremely high proportion of lone-parent households compared to the national average and differentiated Ballymun from many other areas of the country.

By 1996, the proportion of households made up of couples with children had fallen to less than 35% while lone-parent households had increased to just over 37% of all households in Ballymun. This sharp increase in the number of households headed by lone parents is illustrated in the following table:

Household Structure	1996	%	1991	%
Single, no children	829	16.4	804	16.7
Couple, no children	389	7.7	360	7.5
Couple with children	1564	31	1860	38.5
Couple with children + others	186	3.7	168	3.5
Lone parents	1634	32.4	1209	25.1
Lone parents + relative	243	4.8	183	3.8
Other	199	3.9	241	5
Total # Households	5044		4825

Households headed by lone parents have now become the most prevalent household type in Ballymun. When expressed as a proportion of households with children, lone-parent households increased from 40.7% in 1991 to 51.7% - a majority of households with children – in 1996.

The proportional increase of lone-parent families in Ballymun in part reflects the decrease in numbers of two-parent families living in the area. However, there has also been an increase in the actual numbers of lone-parent families living in Ballymun that may be the result of a number of underlying factors suggested by the Census data:

There is a high rate of single parenthood amongst young girls. The Census data provides no direct information on this matter, but the number of women over the age of 15 who are single increased from 2,636 to 3,006 between 1991 and 1996.

There is a high rate of marital breakdown within Ballymun. Between 1991 and 1996 the number of women over the age of 15 who are separated increased from 616 to 702. The number of widows also increased from 264 to 319.

The pattern of uptake of Dublin Corporation housing in Ballymun is higher amongst lone parents than amongst other categories (50% of applications to Dublin Corporation for housing come from lone parents).

A breakdown of the age range of children living in one-parent families strongly indicates a high level of young people, overwhelmingly young women, with children:

	Mother and Children Householders		Father and Children Householders
	N.Units	N.Children	N.Units	N.Children
All Children<15	1186	2254	36	63
All Children+15	337	571	85	135
Other	232	830	27	97
Total	1755	3655	146	295

As a result of the changes in household structure in Ballymun, by 1996 over 46% of all children were being reared in lone parent households, the vast majority of which are headed by women:

	Number of children	% of total children	Average number of children
Couples	4532	53.5	2.56
Lone parents	3950	46.5	2.07
Total # children	8482	100.0

Labour Force Participation

The 1996 Census data shows the population of Ballymun to be 11,973 people between the working age of 15 and 64 years of age. Within this number, there are 5,497 males and 6,476 females. According to the Census data, 4,671 of these were at work, 362 were seeking their first job and 2,487 were unemployed. This is a total of 7,520 people participating in the labour force, which represents a labour force participation rate of 62.8%

Of the 7,520 people active in the labour force, 2,849 were either unemployed or seeking their first job. This represents an unemployment rate of 37.9%. This compares extremely poorly with both the official national figure of 8.7% or the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed estimate of 18% unemployment nationally. The rate for Ballymun would be slightly higher if calculated for the public housing areas only – the above figures include a number of privately owned housing estates that neighbour the flats complex.

In any event, an unemployment rate of 37.9% is one of the highest in any community in the country and almost five times the official national average for unemployment.

Educational Achievement

There are currently approximately 2,350 pupils attending the 8 primary schools in Ballymun while approximately 850 students are attending Ballymun Junior and Senior Comprehensive schools. All of the children attending school in Ballymun live in Ballymun, with the exception of children attending the local Gaelscoil (i.e. a primary school that teaches through the medium of Gaelic) which has pupils from outside the area.

Ongoing research over the past decade points to a consistent pattern of problems for the schools in Ballymun resulting in low educational attainment among the young people attending local schools which is reflected in the following comparative analysis of education participation rates in 1991:

	% leaving school at age 15 or less	% remaining in education at age 20 or over
Nationally	36.1	8.2
Dublin City	39.1	8.7
Ballymun	54.6	1.2

The WRC reports that early school leaving patterns in Ballymun are consistently higher than national or City averages and participation rates in higher education are chronically low. A study of education and training among unemployed people in 1994 revealed the following comparison of educational attainment between unemployed people in Ballymun and the rest of the country:

	Nationally	Ballymun
% of all unemployed with no qualifications	46.7	56.3
% of young unemployed with no qualifications	17.7	37.5
% of all unemployed with leaving certificate	21.4	6.7

Local research in 1996 estimated that less than 25% of children attending schools in Ballymun complete the senior cycle. None of the Traveller children living in the area (principally at St. Margaret’s Travellers site) attend the secondary schools in the area. If they do undertake further education beyond primary level, it is at one of two specialist training centres for Travellers.

Welfare Dependency

The WRC report of 1997 makes the point that the distinctive profile of the population in Ballymun means that “labour force data and unemployment statistics cannot provide a complete picture of the extent to which people are excluded from participation in employment”. For this reason, the WRC gathered together information on welfare payments in general and on Dublin Corporation tenancy status of Ballymun residents that they used to produce an overall picture of welfare dependency in Ballymun in 1997. Through this exercise, they concluded that:

The extent of dependency on welfare from payments such as Lone Parents Allowance, Disability Allowance, Training Allowances and so on is at least equal to the level of dependency on payments from Unemployment Assistance or Benefit. (Only those in receipt of Unemployment Assistance or Benefit are counted for the purposes of the Live Register or for the purpose of calculating the official unemployment figures.)

The scale of welfare dependency in Ballymun, particularly in the flats, is revealed by two stark indicators:

71% of Corporation households depend on social welfare as their only source of income, and just 16% of Corporation tenants draw any income from employment.

Drug Dependency

Absolute figures for the number of people in Ballymun with addiction problems are not available. At present, the Eastern Health Board Satellite Clinic at Domville House has 215 people on their methadone maintenance programme. Of these, 28 people are aged 21 years or less. There are 120 people on the active waiting list for methadone maintenance, 55 of whom are under 21 years of age. In addition, 35 local people are receiving methadone from the mobile clinic which visits the area. The Health Board also report that 300 people have used the needle exchange at Domville House or the mobile clinic since the service came into operation in 1996.

Professional addiction counsellors and Drugs Workers in the area estimate that there are between 350 and 400 intravenous drug users in the area who have not presented for any kind of treatment. There is also serious concern among these workers and many other professionals and volunteers working with young people about an increasing number of young Ballymun people who are regularly smoking heroin.

While there is no doubt that opiate abuse is a significant and serious problem in Ballymun, alcohol addiction is arguably a greater problem. Again, while there are no official statistics about alcohol abuse in the area, it is the experience of local professionals and volunteers that it plays a huge role in the difficulties experienced by the most marginalised families and young people.

Links

Ballymun
Here you can find some background information on Ballymun.

Training
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Our Work
Regeneration Work
Organisational development and management.
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Policy development work.
Local development work.

Ballymun Links
Some Ballymun relevant links.

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