Living Our Rights

A PROJECT addressing human rights issues in South Dublin County found that 70 per cent of respondents had skipped living essentials in the previous six months and less than half felt safe in their home.

A project titled Living Our Rights, which was conducted over 2021 and 2022, has released its findings in a detailed report about building capacity to address human rights failures and inequalities in South Dublin County.

North Clondalkin Community Development Project and St Kevin’s Family Resource Centre, in conjunction with Rights Platform, launched the report in Tallaght Library on Monday, January 30.

The project, aiming to highlight human rights issues to present them to authorities to meet human rights obligations, surveyed residents in Tallaght and Clondalkin who have long been frustrated with issues of deprivation in their communities.

The emergence of mental health problems and suicides associated with homelessness and desperation heightened difficulties in the key areas, and sharpened the focus of the report.

There were 108 respondents to the survey, 84 percent of whom were living in social housing, and it found that there were high levels of deprivation in Cushlawn, Glenshane and Balgaddy.

People told organisers of the survey about a range of issues affecting their lives, including mental and physical health and care, living conditions, housing standards, addiction, education, security, leisure, and participation.

In terms of housing, four out of five people said their home was overcrowded, 22 per cent were on waiting lists, and one in three people felt their living conditions negatively impacted their physical health.

One respondent said they were “currently living in mother’s home” and that “I sleep with my 2 children in 1 room my sister has her child in her room” while a 35-year-old said they “will never be housed by the council”.

Over half of respondents reported damp or mould, with three out of five people reporting difficulty in getting repairs.

The project compared repair and maintenance times between South Dublin County Council (SDCC) and Kildare County Council (KCC).

According to SDCC through the 2016 census, there is 278,767 people living in South Dublin County and updated figures from the 2022 census show that there were 246,977 people living in Kildare.

It can take SDCC up to five days to respond to emergency repairs, the same amount of time it takes KCC to attend to routine issues – which could take the former more than 12 weeks.

Cyclical issues such as replacing doors or leaking gutters can take SDCC up to seven years to attend to, while KCC mark it as a “multi annual” repair, according to the report.

The report, citing Citizens’ Information, says that local authorities are responsible for enforcing minimum standards in rented accommodation.

However, tenants are responsible for non-structural repairs and it “explicitly says, ‘condensation’ isn’t their problem”.

Drugs were an area of key concerns in the health section in the report, with one person saying “there is drug dealing where young children are playing” and another saying there is “a lot of young people doing drugs”.

The report states that 67 percent of people said access to mental health services was very difficult or difficult, with 55 percent saying it was very difficult or difficult to access a GP surgery.

In the areas where the survey was carried out, over half of respondents said employment opportunities were difficult or very difficult and 68 percent never or hardly ever have disposable income.

Half of respondents could “usually afford basics like heat, food, clothes, transport and health care”. Although, one in 10 people said they could hardly ever or never afford these essentials.

Some 60 percent of people had witnessed a hate crime or racism, typically in the form of verbal abuse or physical assault and less than half of people agreed that they felt safe in their home.

Education proved to be one of the more positive areas of the survey and the report recommended that it is “probably not an area which needs to be monitored for human rights compliance”.

The project set out to raise awareness that economic and social rights are directly related to the social exclusion experienced by families and communities within the targeted areas.

Outcomes from the project will include an accumulation of information required to set a clear action pathway for the project, the establishment of a set of flanking support sources and a growing understanding by community activists of human rights approaches.

The three main things that people are in need of is adequate income and a secure home, access to healthcare, education and access to life chances.