Stephen Behan, father of Brendan Behan, the famous Irish playwright, remarked to his son upon their relocation to a council estate outside of the inner city where the Behan family originally resided, that the working class of Dublin were being sent “To Hell or to Kimmage”, a play on Oliver Cromwell’s infamous line “To Hell or to Connaught”. Dublin has seen itself turn from a county harbouring the capital city surrounded by a sea of countryside and small towns, to a sprawling urban jungle stretching to the Dublin Mountains in the south and the large suburban area of Swords to the north, with only a few small towns surrounded by country remaining. When looking at the history of housing in Dublin, much focus is placed solely on the actions of the state and local councils from the 1960s to the present day, but to gain a full understanding of the history of housing it would be more appropriate to place it in the context of a newly independent country dealing with the remains of a colonial history.

 

Much blame is placed on the circumstances the Irish nation emerged from and see nationalist ideologies as a persistent problem inhibiting the advancement of Ireland past the politics of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. However, a postcolonial perspective can reveal that the problems in housing lie in the legacy of British rule and have persisted in an independent Ireland. When looking at housing through a postcolonial lens, there are three main claims which this analysis rests on; Firstly, Ireland, for most of its history was a British colony, secondly, colonial subjects have constricted agency and hybrid identities, and thirdly to find this postcolonial perspective is to look for ways that Ireland was shaped by the legacies of colonialism.

 

Dublin acted as the administrative centre for British rule in Ireland and was occupied by members of the ruling Anglo-Irish class, it hosted some of the worst slums in Europe. As late as 1938, 111,000 people lived in tenements at an average density of 17 per house. It was these conditions that led to labour agitations of the early twentieth century, participants of which also played key roles in the revolutionary period between the 1916 Easter Rising and the 1919 War of Independence and the counter-revolutionary Civil War.

 

The emerging ruling class whose power rested on the Anglo-Irish treat and thus the partition of Ireland, looked to celebrate a newly globalised Ireland that emerged from a dark nationalist past. The architecture of this period is known as international style, which was criticised as an attempt to create a depoliticised and deradicalized present. This then fed into the bland managerialism of the 1960s, lacking any real imagination or creativity. Therefore, the legacy of British rule must be considered when assessing problems in housing in Dublin.

 

To use an example to demonstrate the issues surrounding the expansions westward of the 1960s, an apt example would be Tallaght, one of the new towns built in this period. MacLaran and Punch (2004) outline the legacy of British rule as being the first problem when it came to expansion. It was the densely populated inner city that necessitated this expansion. The draft plan was not published nor placed on public exhibition, and the schematic approach revealed little detail on how specific areas of Dublin would be affected. The planning was outsourced to a British planning consultant Myles Wright, who was appointed as Minister for Local Government. In this role he made a report on the future development of the Dublin region. The plan would accommodate private transport rather than public. Wright described the Irishman as ‘sturdy individualists and democrats’ and stated that conditions for motor transport were the ‘prime-determinant’ of where to place these new urban developments. There was no push from Wright for a public rail service, as he believed there was no reason to subsidise it ‘on social, humanitarian or any other grounds’.

 

 

Tallaght had a space of 1820 ha. at the foot of the Dublin Mountains. 71% was to be residential, 12% industrial, 8% parkland and 3% for a town centre. There were no corporations to oversee this development, instead it was managed by Dublin City Council, located 10km away in the inner city. However, except for the construction of basic infrastructure and social housing by the local councils, the process was seen as more of an experiment into the ability of a local authority to facilitate private sector residential, industrial and commercial development.

 

There was also the issue of landowners already there. Article 43 of the Constitution constitution provides protection for private property seeing it as a natural right. As a result, the lack of willingness to challenge this led to land being purchased at full development value.

 

A main feature of West Dublin which displays attempts by local government to avoid the same issues present in colonial Dublin is the large green areas, found between rows of houses. This was a reaction to the high-density slums of pre-independence Ireland, but all it achieved was the creation of functionless spaces.

 

Another issue Tallaght and parts of West Dublin faced was the lack of amenities. Killinarden in West Tallaght with a population of 8,000 in 1994, had no supermarket, phone kiosk, bank, police station, dentist, clothes shop, credit union or building society. While much has been done since to alleviate the situation, such as more bus routes, the development of the LUAS (tram) red line connecting Tallaght to the inner city, Tallaght Stadium and The Square in the town centre, Tallaght still faces deprivation levels not experienced in the more established towns and villages to the east, particularly the southeast. 

 

When analysing housing in Dublin taking a postcolonial analysis provides an explanation for the approach of the state and local councils in their housing policies and the context these policies developed from. The development of Tallaght displays the fears of repeating the slums of Dublin under British rule but done by completely removing these areas from the centre both geographically and in the aesthetic of the residential areas. Through large green spaces that serve no real function other than to create the illusion that it does not have the same population density problem as the inner city (despite Tallaght being one of the most populated towns in the state) it also displays the ideology of the counter-revolutionary political class that emerged post-independence, through its emphasis on outsourcing construction to the private sector, the lack of public transport in favour of cars and its respect to landowners who profited purely from their fortunate location.