Qualla: Ballymun

Ballymun: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Darren J. Prior, CC BY-SA 4.0. Between August 1966 and the end of that year, the first tenants moved into Ballymun. Seven concrete tower blocks, each fifteen storeys high - in fact sixteen plus plant rooms - rose from green fields five kilometres north of Dublin city centre. They were named for the seven signatories of the 1916 Proclamation: Pearse, Connolly, Plunkett, MacDonagh, MacDermott, Clarke, Ceannt. Nineteen eight-storey blocks and ten four-storey blocks surrounded them, all built by the National Building Agency on a timetable so accelerated that the entire estate of 3,021 dwellings was complete in three years. The first tenants had to pass an interview to get in. By 1985 the towers were synonymous with everything Irish public housing had got wrong; by 2007 they were being demolished. The story Ballymun tells is not about brutalism or modernism. It is about what happens when a country in a hurry builds homes without the shops, schools, and bus routes that turn houses into a place to live.

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Image: Darren J. Prior | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ballymun: Why the Towers Went Up

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Busy lizard, CC BY 4.0. By 1964 the Dublin Corporation had a crisis on its hands. Whole blocks of Georgian tenements in the north inner city were structurally failing - the 1963 collapse of houses on Fenian Street, killing four people, had finally forced the issue. The national government's response, ch...

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Image: Busy lizard | CC BY 4.0

Ballymun: Life in the Towers

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Finnfrog99, CC BY-SA 4.0. The first generation of Ballymun residents arrived with hope. The flats had central heating, hot water, indoor toilets - amenities most of them had never lived with before. There were waiting lists. People interviewed for the right to move in. Then the supports that should have c...

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Image: Finnfrog99 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ballymun: Misneach and Hotel Ballymun

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Finnfrog99, CC BY-SA 4.0. The regeneration that began in 1997 made an unusual decision: a 'percent for art' programme called Breaking Ground commissioned ambitious public art projects alongside the demolition and rebuilding. In 2007, a floor of the vacated Thomas Clarke Tower was temporarily transformed i...

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Image: Finnfrog99 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ballymun: After the Demolition

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Finnfrog99, CC BY-SA 4.0. By 2017, when the formal regeneration ended, the 2,820 demolished apartments had been replaced by just under 2,000 social-housing units and 1,350 privately owned units. The social-housing share had dropped from 80 percent to about 60 percent. Twelve percent of residents were in p...

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Image: Finnfrog99 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ballymun: The Almost-Crash and the Famous Resident

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Beta at English Wikipedia, Public domain. On the night of 16 August 2007, a McDonnell Douglas charter jet carrying 118 passengers and crew on a flight from Lisbon to Dublin came within seconds of crashing into the Metro Hotel, the fifteen-storey building put up as part of the Ballymun regeneration. The pilot, descending ...

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Image: Beta at English Wikipedia | Public domain