Why was "The Ballymun Housing Scheme" a failure?

@PDLL wrote:

outpouring of disgust with anyone who happens to live outside the Pale and who believes that the Irish language – as our national language – is a hindrance to the development of a proper public-transport network.

Nah, just a certain element of the rural mafia/professional whingers. The farming lobbies were the ones who destroyed the Spatial Stregety which would have brought real regional development to towns and cities outside the Pale. That was the rural lobbies demanding the restrictions on one off houses be all but removed and created a free for all in the countryside who did that. Not the West Brit Jackeens. This is what destroyed the tourist industry in rural Ireland – greedy farmers moving into the property development game and building the O’Southforks and O’Gracelands everywhere and destroying the views.

Do you have any idea how much public money is paid per passenger to keep these mad little airports opened around the country – most of them MILES from any real population centres. It is a national scandal but will never be dealth with as the “poor” famers need them once a year to up for Winning Streak or an IFA protest.

People in rural Ireland are way over indulged by this state and always have been since the days of mad Dev. From endless grants, to lack of planning restrictions, to Martin Cullen giving them the Western Rail Corridor for no other reason than a country priest “beseeched” him – while at the same time he is telling thousands of real commuters in Navan and Swords to make sure to put the development levies and strategic planning in place or no railway or metro for you lot.

But over in Claremorris all they have to do is ask and no conditions are placed upon the crackpot rail project trought the bogs of East Galway and Mayo for 3 trains a day of grannies on free travel passes when the current bus service on the route is already half empty. And then you have to listen to some Mayo IFA rep on TV saying “they build metros and Luas all over de place in Dublin, but we get nothing!” Before he leaves the train station (which he’ll never use even when the WRC is opened) and drives his 4×4 back home. Meanwhile 10,000s of commuters in Dunboyne, Navan and Swords are told to wait until 2015 and they might get a rail service. Cork 2008 and Limerick city, well never…. But Claremorris is being developed in to the Clapham Junction of the Irish rail network and there are little or no real commuters livng in that part of Mayo.

You think this is normal? You think this is based on actual rail transport need?

Cities outside Dublin have been as much victims of this pampering of the rural elite as Dublin. Claremorris will have five passenger rail lines leading into it post Transport21 and Limerick City does not even have a decent bus service. If pointing this out makes me an Anglo-Saxon then called me Alfred.

PS: Irish is a dead language, dead as a post. The Irish speakers gave up on it no matter how much money was sent their way to keep it alive.

“However, there are a certain number of inaccuracies which really need to be clarified. The Western Rail Corridor has nothing to do with some stupid priest (whoeevr that is?) beseeching Martin Cullen. “

Yes he did. He and the rest of West on Track were reported by Minister Matin Cullen on the even of Transport 21 that they “beeseeched” him to open it. Even though the McCann Working Group which members of WoT demanded and were even involved with came out aginst opening the WRC in full.

“Look at the facts: Derry (pop. circa 70,000) “

Derry is not on the WRC and never was. It is already on the rail network.

“Sligo (pop. circa 20,000), “

A small provincial town and it is already on the mainline rail network. One of the great tragedies of the WRC is that the campaign took away form a previous plan of implementing a very viable commuter service between Sligo-Collooney-Ballisodare-Ballymoate-Boyle. Lost in the mad shuffle to get Claremorris yet another TWO rail connections to the THREE it already enjoys.

“Galway (pop. circa 80,000), “

Needs a commuter service on the Galway-Oranmore-Athenry corridor. One of the committee of WestonTrack works GalwayCoCO around the corner from the slum which is Galway station. Has he or WoT ever once highlighted what a kip that station is? Nope, all too busy up in the wilds of Mayo pointing at track running through a bog and using terms such as “vital”.

“Ennis (pop circa 20,000), “

Already on the rail network and has a good rail service.

“LImerick (pop. circa 100,000)”

Glad you brought this up as Limerick City was TOTALLY left out of Transport 21 in order to give Claremorris more rail lines runing into it than Dublin will have post T21. Can you now see the trend here regarding the “Western” Rail Corridor…it is no such thing. “Mayo on the Mooch” would be a more accruate title.

“Cork (pop. circa 200,000) – there is nearly 600,000 people”

Also not on the WRC and never was. Like Cork, Galway and Limerick commuter rail services are needed and not three trains a day rattling at 60mph between Sligo and Limerick which would be slower than all comparable road journies over the whole route and that’s even before the Atlantic Road Corridor is built.

The Western Rail Corridor and the Preist and handful of British Trainspotters who are behind it have robbed Sligo, Galway, Limerick of the possibility of some of the money which is being wasted on that grand truck rural route through the bogs, being spent instead on busy commuter rails services and maybe even light rail for Cork, Limerick and Galway.

The biggest winner in Transport 21 was not Dublin – it was Claremorris. The biggst loser was Limerick city.

I suggest next time you at least get some clue of what the hell you are talking about before you accuse others of posting inaccuracies. The Western Rail Corridor is a folly and fleecing of the Irish taxpayers and if built would only emulate the failure of the current Limerick-Waterford-Rosslare line.

600 million for the WRC could do a lot of good for real public transport in and around the cities of the West of Ireland rather than being wasted on farmers in Mayo to admire while they drive past it saying things like “sure wasn’t Fr. MacGreil a greash man altoghter!” while 100,000’s of poor sods who could of done with a commuter rail service from Swords, to Navan, to Raheen can sit in traffic while the development levies are being collected.

BTW it was you sho said “stupid preist” and not me, and you have already been told than the comments relating to the pampering of rural Ireland is not pointed at the ordinary people in the West of Ireland (99% of them have no interest in the WRC reopening as they know they’ll never use it) but at organisations such as the IFA, Western Development Commision, TG4, Council for the West and the gazilion other professional whingers who are already well taken care of by the Irish state.

There is a whole industry in rural Ireland surrounding this victim mentality and when viewed objectively is missing the point of what regional development is. I’ll give you an example. A young lad was killed walking between Coolooney and Balisodare in Co Sligo the other night. A car hit him on the road. the two towns are right next to each other. Now all I hear from the professional whingers is for major infrastructural investments for every village and town from rail corridors to motorrways to broadband. Mega bucks projects.

How about something as simple as some footpaths in and around country towns and vilages so people are not run over when walking home? Regional development is not always about mega projects – try telling that to the rural lobbies. Footpaths are simply not sexy enough but they are more needed to improve quality of life int he West of Ireland that a rail line for theee trains a day which will be mostly empty,

@Cute Panda wrote:

To sum up, I think that Ballymun “failed” in an Irish social sense because it was perhaps too modern for the Dev’s Holy Catholic Rural Ireland and it created a negative reaction to the Irish, who think people can only live in bungalows on an acre of land. I think if Ballymun was built today, it would have got a lot more TLC from Irish Government and society as a whole. A freind of mine who stills lives there once summed it up beautifully. “If we want to make the rest of Ireland respect and cherish Ballymun then paint the flats white and tatch the roof of the towers”.

Ireland was not ready for the Ballymun Flats when they were first built.

I know this is supposed to be an architecture forum so I dont know why Im posting with these people ^ but I have no idea what this rural rant of your is about, Ballymun like towers didn’t work in any Country at the time whether they had Gaelige football or not and would not work today if built, the un-monied put into them and then abandoned, today either.

What is off-topic (if this is what ‘OT’ means) is a quite aggressive rant against people who believe that development should be properly and evenly spread across the country – development that would, in the long term, help ease many of the problems of the great metropolis (Dublin,lest there be any mistake). Perhaps if adequate infrastructure was put in place in the west, then so many people would not be forced to migrate to the east for economic reasons. This would ensure balanced development for all and would help Dublin develop in a more appropriate, paced, and balanced manner. By simply pouring all of the infrastructural concrete into the east you are simply reinforceing the settlement patterns established by the ANglo-Normans and the Elizabethans which were largely based on two factors: 1. geographical proximity to ‘the mainland’ and 2. quality of agricultural land. As we are no longer politically connected to Britain and as we are continually told in such threads as the Eoghan Harris one, Ireland is now a post-agrarian economy. That means, that there is no economic reason that development should be focussed solely on the east (unless of course you simply want to continually overburden Dublin’s infrastructure and allow the rest of the country to decline, or you wish to reinforce the georgraphical biases inherent in British colonial policy in Ireland). Either way, it is a short-sighted, Dublin-biased vision of Ireland’s future. If Dublin people seriously want to deal with such issues as endless housing estates and traffic jams then they can either pour endless amounts of money into Dublin-centric infrastructural solutions, or they can make a real effort to stem the problem on a long-term basis by re-balancing the state’s development in a SUSTAINABLE way. What doesn’t help is some people ranting in an aggressive manner about some individuals in western Ireland who might have a different and more long-sighted (and arguably more sustainable) vision of how the country should develop in the next couple of centuries. Is it that difficult for some Dublin people to imagine a balanced state with a number of regional cities of major significance? Are we scared that the great metropolis might lose some of its alleged greatness?

The problem is not as simple as east vs. west and imho the fault lies largely with government inaction.

For it’s size and population, Dublin lacks a lot of facilities that other similar-sized cities already have – notably a proper mass transport system. For years the government let Dublin grow without any proper planning and without any thought for the future. ‘The city is growing so obviously we’re doing something right’, seems to be the mentality of the day.

On the other hand, the west was getting poorer and less densly populated and the government did little to try to stop this. A few half-planned measures like an airport for (almost) every western county and some grants did little to alleviate the problem.

Despite this, the solution now is not a big-bang approach, spending millions on projects which are badly thought out and which have no reason d’etre other than balanced development. The solution lies in proper planning over the long term, not warm fuzzy thoughts.

The WRC is a point in principle. Buses around Mayo run half empty and infrequently yet in the name of balanced development, we’re talking about building a multi-million euro train line that runs less often and that IE don’t want to operate. A well built road network and decent local bus service would provide a much better return but, because Dublin gets a train line, the west has to get one too.

I’m not attacking people from the west because some people from Dublin suffer the same limited-view mindset, unable to understand why any money should be spend outside Dublin. It should be up to the government to make strong decisions that are best for the country as a whole.

PDLL-The anglo-normans (lets call a spade a spade, the brits) did not ‘pick’ Dublin. The Vikings had established a trading city there hundreds of years beforehand because Dublin is close to Europe.

Now, you give it the usual “balanced regional develoment” routine. The fact is that we should not ‘spread investment thinly’ in all corners of the land. We should pick cities and develop them (a la the doomed NSS-doomed because it dared to ignore some real two-bit towns in rural Ireland in favour of places like Sligo), not allow further low density, unsustainable sprawl.

Fair play to An Taisce for objecting to yet another blot on the landscape in Leitrim. It’s high time these joke county councils were told what to do (unfortunately Dick Roche told them to do the wrong thing to get FF votes). The west’s latest whinge is that tourism is Dublin centric. That’s because the old allure of the west is gone-all the natural beauty has been stadily destroyed by one off housing and now visitors are failing t return. Why would they? They can see suburbia in Croydon/Basildon/Wilmslow, they don’t need to pay to see it all over Mayo. Of course the western tourism agency is blaming a lack of funding on advertising and not the destruction of the once beautiful landscape. At least here in the East we have Wicklow Co Co protecting the beautiful garden of Ireland a hell of a lot better than Mayo Co Co-try to build a one off house in Wicklow and see how far you get. Wicklow realised that tourism in the county depends on natural beauty and has acted accordingly. Even Fingal where tourism is not important (apart from the Airport), you can not build a one-off house to save your life. Fingal realised some time ago that Balbriggan, Swords and Blanchardstown should be developed as “county towns” and the countrysideshould be preserved. Clare co co were publically admonished by the NRA (and thretened with funding withdrawal!) for persisting with granting planning on one off housing within 100m of national roads in the counrty. Backward mindset, victim complex, coupled to an electoral system that underrepresents the urban areas and over represents the rural areas (beacuse every constituency has minimum 3 seats under the constitution, regardless of how small the population!).

@PDLL wrote:

Fine. Then lets just continue to build Dublin up. Lets just cram it till it bursts.

Dublin is a grossly underpopulated city for its size as is Cork, Limerick and Waterford. All these cities need about twice the number of people living in them as they currently have.

Dublin is not overpopulated, not even close to it. Just becuase the IFA make a statement such as “Dublin will literally fall into the Irish sea from too many people living there” does not make this a fact.

At no point have you PDLL encounter one person on this forum who is anti-regional development. The very opposite is what you constantly are told here and yet you seem to choose not to hear it. Why can’t you just not accept that people in Dublin and the rest of urban Ireland want to see regional development, but they also want to be able to protect the natural beauty of the Irish countryside and not have it turned into Essex, Orange County or suburban Atlanta in order to indulge greedy farmers who were handed the Irish countryside after the Brits left to hold it in trust for the Irish nation.

People in cities are the Irish nation as well. So the beautiful views and unique vistas belong to all Irish people and not just for farmers to destroy with O’Southforks and O’Gracelands and then wonder why the tourists are staying in the cities.

Regional balance is not an over populated and usustainable countryside and half empty cities. I am totally in favour of regional development and investment. Not crackpot schemes like the Western Rail Corridor which are nothing more than trying to make something which cannot work, work.

On the subject of the impact of serious crime in Dublin and Limerick cities on the taxpayer, I would like to see a comparioson of that versus the impact on the taxpayer of the accepted human sacrifice in rural Ireland of road deaths. And let’s be honest here, the reason why the Government is not cracking down on speeding and drink driving in rural areas is becuase it is the norm, is socially accepted and would impact on the pockets of rural publicans.

BTW Galway was founded by a tribe of 12 English families and for hundreds of years it was more or less illegal to be Irish in Galway.

oh and to bring this thread back on topic, the Ballymun Flats desipte being neglected and constantly slurred by the Irish rural-mindset within the media and government, Ballymun was a hot bed of Irish culture and arts.

While the rural Ireland drove around Mayo wearing 10 gallon hats and listening to Culchie and Western songs about “I’m a Down Home Digle Cowboy Yew-Haw Partner” the residents of the Ballymun flats were sending their children to Irish schools and tradtional Irish dancing, art and music were thriving in the Ballymun flats.

So you can keep your biggoted rural snobbery to yourself. I am from the Ballymun flats and I am just as “Irish” as you are. In fact, I would wager more, becuase I want to see ALL of Ireland get it’s fair dues while you and the rest of the agri-elite want only rural Ireland looked after and to hell with everybody else.

@murphaph wrote:

The NSS is dead and it was a good idea.

It had to be sacrificed to – it was “a Dublin Mindset”.

Could you imagine if a Dublin poltician went down to Clare and told them that their road deaths are high and the tourists are staying away from your county because of a “rural mindset” – there would be murder and yet people in Dublin watched a budget speech delivered by a Minister of Finance which attacks people in Dublin in a bigoted manner as if was his patriotic duty, while Farmer Bertie sitting there beside this gobshite nodding in agreement.

McCreevy is the rural Finance Minister who for almost 4 years withheld the money needed for the Dublin Metro, Interconnector and Luas extenions treating them as if they were luxury projects, while at the same time he threw cash at the horsey crowd.

You just couldn’t make this stuff up even if you tried.

Where does one start. I had promised myself not to get into this debate as I have been down this cul-de-sac before. A few points that might help the urban lobbyists:

– did it ever dawn on you that you if you genuinely want to see things change, vilifying those who live in the country with ignorant and abusive stereotypes is probably not going to help (please note CP);
– did it ever dawn on you that you if you genuinely want to see things change, talking down to those who live in the counrtyside and patronising them is not going to help;
– did it ever dawn on you that urban living is only one concept of human settlement – its is not the beginning and end of the way humans might wish to live – please try to see things from other perspectives – what suits you may not suit everyone;
– did it ever dawn on you that the concept of a utopian pastoral countryside is a fictional ideal and the countryside should not be just seen as a weekend play park for city-dwellers;
– did it ever dawn on you that while the Irish countryside has its imperfections in places, cities like Dublin Cork and Limerick have large swathes of urban ugliness which overshadow anything seen in the countryside in terms of scale and intensity
– did it ever dawn on you that proper regional development of our towns and cities (Galway, Cork, Limerick etc) should mean that they are not just satelite towns of Dublin connected by rail and motorway to Dublin alone. Proper regional development involves full regional development – all of the major population centres along the west coast should be connected by rail and proper road networks so that you do not have to transport people or good via Dublin every time you want to get from Cork to Galway or Galway to Derry or Sligo to Belfast or wherever. That is integrated regional development.

Maybe I missed something in my civics classes in school which highlighted the fact that Dublin people seem to be higher up the food chain thatn the other citizens of Ireland thereby entitling them to shove their opinions and lifestyle down everyones throats in an abusive manner, but what would I know – I am just a red-neck culchie who likes country and western music and who stuffs my local politician’s pocket full of cash every time I want to build a night club in a field outside Lahinch. CP – judging by what you said in previous posts, I would have thought that you would have been a bit more careful about propagating ill-found stereotypes. It seems that this little detail has by-passed you.

Cute Panda weakens his arguments by overstating the case but his posts are so funny. Keep it up.

He could just have said that in Ireland the urban poor have been viewed with more hostility and suspicion than the rural poor. Hence the ‘failure’ of Ballymun.