Tony Gregory's Deal - A short measure?
The Gregory deal brings real benefits to Dublin's inner city, but it is no substitute for a worked out plan to deal with urban blight.
By Pat Brennan
As far as political deals go - and they go as far as, international a~rports for villages in the West of Ireland - Tony Gregory s deal for Dublin was among the most thought out of political bargains. Its strengths lie in the simple fact that Gregory knows Dublin and its problems better than most. Its weakknesses lie in the fact that this is a last minute deal, not a plan that was studied, costed, discussed, and finalised as being in the best interests of the people of Dublin.
No one knows just how much the Gregory deal will cost. No one knows if it is the most appropriate answer to the needs of the inner city. As yet, except for a tax on derelict sites and a levy on office space, no one knows who is going to pay for the Gregory deal, whether it will represent a transfer of resources from rich to poor or a simple addition to the borrowing bill which will evenntually be paid for by ordinary tax payers.
It may well be that whatever it costs is worth it - that we will save in vandalism, police, prisons, health bills, and the social ills of deprivation and urban blight. It may also be the case that after the initial money is spen t and Tony Gregory is not as central to Fianna Fail's power as he is at the moment, that Dublin's poor will be no better off.
Dublin's inner city - roughly the area between the canals - contains some of the poorest communities in Ireland. The area is marked by overcrowding, poor housing conditions, high unemployment, and low educational attainment. All these problems exist in other poor areas of the country, notably remote rural areas and Dublin local authority housing estates such as Ballyfermot. Other Irish cities - following the same growth pattern of Dublin - are also beginning to develop the same "inner city" problems. However, in Dublin the problems are compounded by vanndalism, violence, traffic congestion, and pollution. In Dublin, the multi-deprivation factors are simply more advanced and acute than they are in other poor areas. Also, because the city is central to the business, political and social life of the country, urban blight in Dublin costs the country more, in terms of prisons, policing, lost busiiness, costs of moving goods through congested traffic.
Between 1926 and 1971 the population between the canals has been halved. In the 1970s this decline continued at a rate of 2.4 per cent per year. The population of the' inner city now stands at about 70,000. Most of these people are unskilled, poor and live in substandard accommoodation. Many of them are unemployed. A high percentage of them are old people living alone.
The decline of the city centre has coincided with the growth of the Dublin region. Cities exist in the first place because of economies of scale. Grouping people together lowers the costs of services, and makes markets more readily accessible. Since the late 1960s the large groupings in Dublin have shifted from the city centre to the suburbs. This was facilitated and encouraged by different local rates in Dublin city and county areas. Simply, it was cheaper to live in the suburban areas and people moved to the suburbs.
Dublin city had a declining population from which to extract revenue yet the need for revenue remained high because people used the city during the day. And so serrvices and maintenance of the city deteriorated. As the costs of operating a business in Dublin rose, businesses, especially manufacturing businesses, moved out. At the same time, there was a huge influx of people from rural areas into the Dublin area, further encouraging the growth of suburbs.
Now, there are almost no middle income people living in the inner city and the economies of scale, that once encouraged inner city business life, have shifted to the .suburbs. The most obvious example of this is the growth of shopping centres with late night shopping facilities, in the suburbs, while city centre shopping diminishes.
The loss of economies of scale in the city centre has been further exacerbated by the economic costs incurred by traffic congestion. Dublin has been also damaged by inncompeten t planning whereby road widening schemes are organised' but never carried out - but the area originally designated for road widening deteriorates because property owners aren't willing to risk main tenance money.
The end result is a city centre which is overcrowded and congested during the day, which is run by a local authority which hasn't the funds to provide a pleasant environment, and which is deserted and increasingly dangerous during the evening when all but the 70,000 residents retreat to the suburbs.
The first item on the Gregory-Haughey deal is the proovision of 500 jobs for unskilled workers in Dublin Corporation. This - it is hoped - will have a two-fold effect. First, it should take 500 inner city dwellers off the dole. Second, it will add 500 maintenance workers to the Corporation's staff and Dublin will be a nicer place because of it. The money was provided for these jobs in the last budget, but the Corporation has not yet advertised for workers simply because the Department of the Environnment has not yet stated whether the jobs are to be perrmanent or short term. If they are to be permanent there will be certain economic and social advantages. If they are short term, once off jobs that won't be here next year, the advantages are negligible.
There has been £2.s million allocated for this plan in the budget. The average wage for an unskilled worker in the Corporation is £90 per week. Obviously the incentive for men with several dependents to come off the dole for that wage will not be great, but the young unemployed will benefit.
While unemployment is a problem of national signiificance, it is particularly acute in the inner city where it is almost twice as high as in the .Dublin region generally. Almost 20 per cent of all heads of households in the inner city are unemployed. Most of those out of work are unnskilled labourers (40%). A high percentage of the unemmployed are young and have attained a low level of educaation.
Because of modernisation, relocation and closure of factories, the area between the canals has lost 2,000 jobs per year since the mid 1970s. Jobs that have come into the area have been mainly in the information sector and inner city residents haven't got the skills required to fill these jobs. The modernisation of Dublin port has severely reduced the numbers of unskilled workers employed there and while overall employment in the port has reduced by just 10 per cent in the last decade, those working in the port increasingly come from the suburbs.
Because inner city residents are relatively unskilled, they have proved not to be flexible workers, and generally speaking have not moved with employment out to the suburbs.
While the Gregory deal offers the possibility of 500 hew jobs and the environmental advantages these jobs will create, there is no guarantee that they will go to inner city dwellers. It is almost certainly impossible for the Corporation to practice this kind of positive discrimination.
Afurther £750,000 has been allocated for maintenance men for improving inner city housing. The jobs will go "to skilled craftsmen most of whom will probably not be Gregory's constituents. However, the real advantage in this scheme is in improved housing. The inner city housing stock is old, overcrowded and dilapidated. Most of the residents of the worst dwellings are old people. Most of the money will be spent on installing toilet and bathroom facilities which are desperately needed. (One third of houseeholds in the inner city have no bath or shower).
The Corporation's maintenance section has been run down- in recent years and this was further exacerbated by the Coalition Government's decision to disallow the Corporation the right to retain 40% from the sale of Corrporation dwellings to spend on maintenance. The GregoryyHaughey deal has reversed that decision.
Although there has been no economic analysis of the spin off benefits from spending in these social areas, houssing maintenance is one area that might well pay for itself in terms of reduced medical and institution costs of elderly people who live in substandard housing.
Land, in the inner city is expensive. It is made even more expensive because it is allowed to become artificially scarce. There is obviously low demand, or derelict sites would be uneconomic to maintain. But by allowing widespread dereeliction to continue supply is actually restricted and urban blight encouraged.
The new tax on derelict sites will alleviate this situation somewhat but what is really needed is a scheme to control land prices and strict enforcement of zoning. Otherwise, the cost of building public housing in the inner city will remain prohibitively high. Also, the selling oflocal authority houssing will have to stop if the envisioned "renewed" inner city is not to become a haven for those with enough money to buy what was originally intended to be public housing. As it is, any urban renewal will automatically result in higher house prices for private houses in the inner city - houses which have traditionally housed low income families.
According to last year's NESC report on Dublin, one of the fundamental causes of the decline of Dublin has been short sighted planning, largely caused by the lack of cooordination of the two planning authorities, the Corporation and the County Council. The report recommends the estabblishment of a Greater Dublin Authority to oversee the planning of the entire region, so that decisions made in one area are not at the expense of the other. Against this backkground it is hard to understand the justification for £2 million for an inner city development authority. It is also difficult to imagine just what this body will do that should not already be done by existing authorities, except that it might act as an advocate for the inner city. However, since it is obvious that a halt to urban blight would benefit the whole of the Dublin region, regional development of the inner city could easily come within the brief of a combined Corporation-County Council authority.
The educational section of the Gregory package is aimed at breaking the cycle of low education, no training, unemmployment - particularly since there is plenty of evidence that inner city children whose parents are unemployed are more likely not to attend school and also more likely to come into conflict with the law.
None of the educational proposals have yet come to fruition, but they state that the north city centre area specifically be declared an educational priority area. Almost three quarters of inner city residents have completed their education by the time they are 15. A particularly strong correlation between lack of education and unemployment exists, according to the NESC survey, in the north city centre area where it was found that nearly 80 per cent of those aged between 15 and 18 had left school, nearly all (86%) with no educational qualifications. Almost half were unemployed. This is worse than it is in the local authority housing estates around Dublin. There is also a correlation between firstly, class size and non attendance and secondly between non attendance and early school leaving.
The educational aspects of the Gregory deal are hardest to quantify simply because they are vague and involve the projected benefits of the interaction of a number of factors - smaller class size, remedial teachers, links with the home to establish a pro-education attitude. These, and other vague parts of the package, are likely to fall by the wayside, particularly if Gregory's political clout diminishes as it allmost certainly will if Eileen Lemass is elected in the Dublin West By-Election.
What he has accomplished is 500 jobs, improved housing conditions, more inner city housing, £20 million to keep the Corporation's services ticking over, a tax on derelict sites and a levy oil office development. All of these are of benefit to those who live in the city centre. However, it's not enough to make a substantial impact on the environnmental decline of the inner city, which is inextricably linked with the deprivation of the people who live there. •