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THE LAST OF THE Ballymun residents are set to move into their new homes soon as the Ballymun Regeneration Project comes to an end.
All residents in the remaining tower blocks will shortly receive keys to their new homes and the final tower blocks on Balbutcher Lane and Joseph Plunkett Tower will be demolished in early 2014.
Portrait of the people
A photography exhibition, launched last night, offers a collective portrait of some of the people of Ballymun. In words and photos, twelve people who care about Ballymun and its future feature in the exhibition.
Ronan King, Chairman, Ballymun Regeneration said:
Since the creation of Ballymun Regeneration in 1997, the town of Ballymun has been physically transformed. But Ballymun has always been about much more than its buildings.It is, first and foremost, a community of proud ‘Ballymunners’ who campaigned vociferously for change and enthusiastically embraced the vision of a self-sustaining, safer and better new Ballymun. In short, the story of Ballymun is all about its people.
He said the objective of the project was to simply “identify and profile just some of the many people who have been, and who will continue to be, active in promoting a new and improving Ballymun”.
Photos
Called Ballymun People, this artistic project designed by Charles and Elizabeth Handy and sponsored by Dublin City Council will run at axis Ballymun until Friday 25 October, before moving to other locations including Dublin Airport early in 2014.
Some people featured in the Ballymun project include Maura Doyle, Principal, St Joseph’s School; Anne Keating, Community activist; Peter McVerry, founder Peter McVerry Trust and Paul Moran, Garda Superintendent and many more.
Here are some of the great images taken by Elizabeth Handy – a portrait photographer of some distinction.
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As a ballmunner and having Worked with Ellen. She is an absolute legend who’s done more for the old folk. My main gripe is 2 or 3 of these ain’t really ballymunners.
Here here Leslie Alan. Photos of the likes of Paddy Eccles, who was very involved in sport for the local youth, Una Larkin who ran dancing lessons for the young girls and put on varities shows for the young, and maybe photos of some of the great teachers to be found in the 3 local primary schools, gaelscoil and the comprehensive should have been included. But like everything else, more often than not its the blow ins that get lauded and not the locals.
Even paddy haughey. Although not a ballymunner. But having a youth project there 40 yrs qualifies him. Where is his picture here
Where’s Adam and Paul?
In xtra vision ye t***
The flats on Balbutcher Lane are not “Towers” they are 8 eight stories. As for the regeneration coming to an end. The 50 odd thousand people in Ballymun will tell you that the eh “regeneration” has failed miserabley. While the shopping center still stands the only shops open in it are Tesco, a coffee shop and the Towers Pub. With a population of over 50 000 the people in Ballymun need a proper shopping center and indeed it is the only suburb in Dublin that does not have one. So well they have a beautiful new arts center/theater but given the choice the people would have prefered to have the brand new shopping center that they were promised at the start of the regeneration. I grew up in Ballymun (I was 3 months old when we moved in and I lived there till I was 26) and we had plenty of green areas and playgrounds to play in, now – theres barely a blad of grass to be seen. They’ve made a right hames of the place.
Could not agree more Ann, I grew up there and family still live there ,the place is a disgrace who ever was in charge of the design for the houses should go back to college and learn about spacial design, green space and learn to make things more uniformed.It looks worse now than before
Well Tom I hadnt been in Ballymun for almost 10 years. I attended a funeral in the Holy Spirit 4 years ago (I have been out there several times since then visiting old friends) and I almost cried when I saw the mess they had made of the place. The new houses they built on all of the old green areas, are all on top of one another, not one road named after any of the 7 heroes the towers were named after. The planning makes absolutely no sense. Its just another fine mess for the people who live there, to live with.
How do you know that the people who broke into your home are from Ballymun?? They could easily have been from Coolock, Portmarnock, Finglas, Blackrock. or any other part of Dublin. You are nothing but an ignorant idiot and like I said before, you have a bloody cheeck to imply that the 50 000+ people who live in Ballymun are all involved in criminal activity. In the 26 years we lived there we never fell victim of any crimes and knew nobody who was involved in criminal activity. My parents had to move out to Clane in Kildare before they fell victim to criminals when on 2 occasions someone tried to steal my dads car and then last year their house was broken into . Of course the likes of YOU wont mention the white collar criminals who live in affluent leafy suburbs, whose criminal activities has this country in shite.
@ Maria Pearse ^^^ thats in response to your second comment. Don’t know how it ended up here.
Great project. It took way too long but Ballymun is a far nicer place because of it.
Plot twist: All the items they’re holding, were stolen on the way to the studio.
Maria Pearse you have an FN cheeck to imply that everyone that lives in Ballymun is involved in criminal activity. How dare you!!! All you have managed to do with that comment is show just how ignorant you are.
I lived in Ballymun for 2 years Ann.
My apartment was broken into twice. I once woke up to find a junky stumbling around in my room looking for something to rob. Not to mention walking to the bus stop one day to find a guy slumped on the street corner with a rather fetching stab wound who told me to mind my f******g business. Then there was the nearly weekly smashed windows in the apartment block from the locals throwing rocks at them, and the bi-weekly bonfires. Fun times.
So every single one of us is that junkie?
Not everyone in Ballymun is like that, Marie. I know plenty of people who live here who work hard to provide for their families,who go to college and do courses so they can better themselves. Comments like yours are tarring us all with the same brush, and I find them downright insulting.
Glad you put the word “ballymunners” in quotation marks because half of those people are no more ballymunners than elton john is. Most of them have had their careers nicely enhanced by BRLs use of public money though.
One of them ( hilariously ) is City Councillor/ Publicity Junkie Andrew Montague, who’s on the board of directors of BRL. Must be handy to be able to spend the tax payers money on free PR for yourself
Still this project is probably the finest tribute to themselves that BRL and the axis centre could have imagined. Joe taxpayers funds being diverted for their own ends with f**k all benefit to ballymun, it sums up their existence perfectly
Spot on pal
Ballymunner and proud of it. There are some amazing people who live here and do more work for the community than those in power.
I’m curious as to what the definition of a Ballymunner is. My parents generation moved en-masse to the flats at the end of the sixties / early seventies. Most came from inner city tenements. Before that the area was woodland and farmland. Technically these people could be classed as blow in’s.
Regarding Maria’s earlier comment, it doesn’t matter where your house is. I presently live in Portobello and my house was broken into in the middle of the day. It happens everywhere.
As for the shopping centre. That will not be built due to cold hard economics. An area that is surrounded by shopping centres like the Omni and Charlestown does not need another one. Ann, the population you quote is for the entire Ballymun / Finglas electoral area. They need to think of something akin to Kildare village. Discount brand names available right next to Ikea.
Keith the money for the new shopping center was budgeted for by BRL, but as usual things were done arse about face. The old shopping center should have been demolished and a new one built at the beginning of the regeneration project, which is what was promised. As for Ballymun not needing a new one, thats fine if you have a car and can drive down to Omni or Charlestown, but if you dont have a car its a very long walk from Omni up to the top of Poppintree with a load of heavy shopping bags and lets face it Omni isnt exactly up there with the Square or Blancherdstown. But I completely agree that something like the Outlet in Kildare is what is needed. As for the population, I think you are mistaken Keith, Back in the 80s when I was growing up there, there were more people living in Ballymun than there were in Galway. The figure I have given was the one used by BRL when they talked about improving the quality of life and living conditions for the people who live there. Maybe Leslie Alan or Trish can give us the correct figure.
Not minding the guff about people who were born in an area and lived there all their lives being classed as blow ins, the population of ballymun was around 20k in the last census so its roughly the same population as sligo, ennis etc.
The reason the shopping centre was never built was because other projects were prioritized ahead of it, like building the massive Dublin corporation offices. Of course if you were a cynic you could say that it was because BRL were strangling the life out of the current shopping center to squeeze the existing businesses out of it. Nice clean slate for the developers.
Which they succeeded in doing just before their new development went tits up so now ballymun has a run down shell of a shopping centre with mabye five businesses in it. Some regeneration
Last census the population was around the 22,000 mark
Ikea.
Treasury Holdings (now in NAMA) were in control of the land earmarked for the shopping centre. They were to use private money to build it. We all know whats happened since then. Treasury went bust.
I agree that BRL share some responsibility for this not going ahead. They should have pressed for it sooner. Before Charlestown was built. But at this stage from a business point of view it probably would not work. Personally I’d prefer to see the main street finished with shops along it.
As for the question of the population I got the numbers from the Dublin City Council website.
Wouldn’t be mad about the photos, no substance
Wonder if the man with the dreads and eye patch is there? Anybody from around the area HAS to know who I mean…?
I know who you are talking about but I dont know if hewas actually from Ballymun. He seemed to walk everywhere and I dont think I ever saw him on the bus.
I presumed he lived there since I always saw him walking to/from the ‘Mun direction.
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