In the final part of the series on Irish towns, CARL O'BRIENvisits Dún Laoghaire, where a sheen of affluence belies the social exclusion experienced by many. Now plans are afoot to reinvigorate the town by exploiting its greatest asset – the sea
IT’S A sunny Friday afternoon in spring and Dún Laoghaire has rarely seemed so luminous. On the pier, strollers have cast their jackets off and are feeling the sun on their faces. There’s a small queue outside the window of Teddy’s ice-cream shop, where customers devour quick mouthfuls before collecting their change. Behind the wrought-iron railings of the People’s Park, old and young are balmed out, shoes discarded, soaking up the warmth. Close your eyes, all you can hear is the clank and jingle of the yachts moored in the harbour. Breathe in deep and you inhale a fresh, salty breeze.
It’s hard to believe that anything could cast a cloud over a glorious day like this. Yet Dún Laoghaire, for all its Victorian-era elegance and modern sheen of affluence, is suffering as much as any Irish town.
You can see it in the careworn shopfronts along George’s Street, where dozens of premises lie unoccupied; in the stream of people filing in and out of the welfare office on York Road; in the worried faces of those clawing their way out of debt with assistance from the Money Advice and Budgeting Service (Mabs) on Clarence Street.
“For many years we have grappled with the official portrayal of the area as a location of wealth and affluence, with only limited pockets of communities experiencing disadvantage and social exclusion,” says Marie Carroll, manager of the Southside Partnership, a publicly-funded local development group.
“But our work told has us that the official stereotype of the area contrasts with the reality on the ground in terms of concentrations of disadvantage. This ‘on the ground’ reality is seen day-in, day-out in the work of our staff and our many partners.”
In fact, the local authority has higher numbers of people living in social exclusion compared with most areas of the country.
Unemployment, has increased dramatically, leaping from 2,741 in February 2008 to 7,541 in 2010, a 175 per cent increase. Young men bore the brunt of the increases early on, but all age groups have been hit as the shockwaves of the property collapse slammed into other parts of the economy.
Yet, much of this suffering is hidden. In the traditionally affluent parts of town, those worst-hit try to conceal dramatically reduced incomes or struggle to keep up appearances. Volunteers with the St Vincent de Paul say they visit outwardly prosperous homes which never thought they would have to rely on hand-outs for support.
“Sometimes we’re asked to visit during the day so neighbours don’t see us,” says one woman involved in providing support to families. “These are people who are massively over-stretched with no safety net and can’t afford to pay for basics like light or heat.”
MOST DAYS, THE PANIC,fear and desperation of the downturn tumbles through the doors of the local Mabs office and onto the desk of Catherine Scallon-Collins.
She does her best to create a soothing, comfortable atmosphere. A pan pipes soundtrack plays quietly in the background in her office which looks out onto a sheltered courtyard. It needs to be calming: all too often she’s dealing with people on the edge.
“We deal with crisis situations all the time,” she says. “One person after another. They tend to be in a state of panic. It’s like the carpet’s been ripped out from beneath their feet and they’re stunned.”
When the service started in the late 1990s, it mainly helped less well-off people in debt to money lenders or who were failing to pay local authority rents. These days, it’s the squeezed middle class who are just as likely to need help.
Lawyers, accountants, middle managers or the self-employed who overstretched during the boom with large mortgages, personal loans or ballooning credit card bills are now paying the price.
“Some are very distressed. We even have had people here saying they are going to kill themselves. So, we effectively provide crisis counselling a lot of the time.”
In plotting a way out, Scallon-Collins works with clients to keep the credit wolves from the door by assisting them to make dramatic lifestyle changes. That can mean taking children out of private schools, selling the 4x4 in the driveway, or moving to a more affordable home.
“We say ‘you need to prioritise the roof over your head’. There is a lot of shame in debt and people want to keep up appearances,” she says.
Andy, in his mid-30s, never considered he’d find himself jobless and up to his neck in debt. He worked in marketing for a bank but was let go after the financial crisis hit. He owned an apartment, enjoyed work and led an active social life. Suddenly, he says, everything changed.
“I just felt a sense of complete failure,” he says. “I’d wake up on a Monday morning, look out on the main road from my apartment at all the cars heading to work. I felt disconnected from it all.”
His self-esteem hit the floor and he began to drift away from friends. He stopped socialising. Going to the grocery shop was often the sole outing of the day.
He kept looking for work, but the rejection letters mounted up. One day he received three letters in the post, and wondered whether he could keep going for much longer. Another time, a civil servant from the welfare office hung up on him when he queried the level of payment he was receiving.
The turning point came when he got in touch with the local employment service, attached to the Southside Partnership. It offers support and guidance for unemployed people looking for work.
“In essence, it was all about rebuilding confidence in myself,” he says. “I had a degree and felt a bit embarrassed looking for help. But they do help. They assist you with CVs and give a structure to your day. I’ve seen people go the other way, and just stay at home all day and drink.”
Eighteen months after he was laid off, he got a job – a three-month contract working in marketing for a telecoms firm. He’s hopeful it will extend to a full-time position.
“I’m gradually rebuilding myself back up,” he says. “People who’ve been through unemployment tend to be a lot stronger and emotionally tougher . . . If anything, I’m overperforming. I want to prove that I can do this job well.”
On George’s Street, the “to let” signs and empty shopfronts point to the impact of the downturn on Dún Laoghaire’s commercial life. The fact that there’s less money in people’s pockets is just part of the problem. In addition, business owners say high rates, over-zealous car clamping and competition from new shopping centres like the Dundrum Town Centre are taking their toll.
In a sign of changing times, charity shops are doing some of the busiest trade on George’s Street. Barnardos, the Irish Cancer Society, Mrs Quin’s, Oxfam, Age Action and the St Vincent de Paul all have a presence on the street (although donations are down since a firm in Wicklow started giving out money for unwanted clothes, says one shop assistant).
Paul Broadberry is one of the victims of the downturn. After 17 years in business, he was forced to close the doors of his television shop on George’s Street, DLTV, earlier this year.
“I’d like to have kept the place going for longer, but it just wasn’t an option,” he says. “You only need to look around the street to see that it’s getting empty. I can’t compete with big retailers like Harvey Norman or shopping centres like Dundrum.”
Established retailers such as Breasal Ó Caollaí, who runs Costello Jewellers – a small shop off the main street – says high commercial rates and insufficient of affordable parking are crippling businesses at a time when they need support most.
“Motorists are being hounded on parking and getting clamped for being just a few minutes over their time. I see it out the window here everyday. Once someone has a fine slapped on their window and paid the €40 fine, they’re not going to come back into town, are they?”
Time and again parking is raised as an issue. Ann Joyce of Dún Laoghaire Community Association is livid at the “harassment” by traffic wardens and says parking rates for areas such as Dundrum and Blackrock are significantly cheaper. “We’re now at a stage where people don’t want to work or shop in the town,” she says.
At least 60 shops in Dún Laoghaire have closed over the past two years and the number of vacant premises seems to be growing by the week. Many other business owners say they are holding on by a thread.
Conservation group An Taisce has even expressed concern that the lack of viable businesses is threatening to transform some of town’s historic shopfronts into eyesores.
Ironically, Dún Laoghaire was a boomtown before the word was even invented.
The construction of the harbour, along with the first railway in Ireland in the 1830s – said to be the world’s first suburban commuter railway – led to the rapid expansion of the town. Its population doubled within a few years and it soon developed a reputation as a fashionable Victorian seaside resort. The well-preserved cast-iron fountain, bandstand and sea-shelter on the pier are reminders of a distant, more genteel era.
The town’s fortunes varied over the years, but the construction of the Dún Laoghaire Shopping Centre in the mid-1970s seemed to point to a new era of prosperity. This squat, ugly building that dominates the town became a huge draw for shoppers along the east coast who were visiting a multi-storey, enclosed shopping mall for the first time.
The owners refitted and modernised it a few years ago, but it’s no competition for the glitzy chrome and glass shopping palaces of Dundrum and the surrounding suburbs.
BUT BEHIND THEscenes, there is vigorous work being done to reverse the economic tide. The local council is introducing temporary "pop-up shops" into empty commercial premises. The concept involves offering short-term low-cost space to local entrepreneurs, social enterprises or community organisations.
A weekly organic market on Fridays and a craft and food market on Sundays are bringing new life to the streets. Work is under way on a plaza that will cover over the railway and help connect the harbour with the town. Numerous festivals are planned for the summer months, including a major international yachting race.
Various groups such as Dún Laoghaire Business Association, the local authority and harbour authorities are busy implementing a new plan which centres on realising the full potential of the town’s jewel in the crown: the sea.
The “brand project” involves celebrating the town’s connection with the harbour and revitalising the area as Dublin Bay’s cultural and leisure waterfront.
“It’s part of making Dún Laoghaire into a destination town,” says Don McManus, chair of the business association. “We’re lucky we have these resources on our doorstep. Other towns will be badly affected by large out-of-town shopping centres, but with the pier and the harbour, we have the resources to fill that vacuum.”
Dozens of initiatives are under way, from the very ambitious – a masterplan for developing leisure facilities in the harbour – to the practical, such as a new website (dunlaoghaire.ie) and a “road train” which will take visitors from the port, out along the pier towards the James Joyce Museum in Sandycove and back again in the summer.
“One million people walked the pier last year,” says McManus. “What we’re doing is connecting the town with the pier, by covering over the Dart line and putting in a boulevard and increasing the connectivity of the entire area. This is a town with huge potential.”
Ultimately, the potential of a town lies in its people and giving them every chance to contribute to the area.
Loretta Whelan found herself on the dole for almost two years after a long spell of secure employment. Like countless others, she felt her self-esteem and confidence hit rock bottom. But doors began to open for her when she qualified for the back-to-work scheme, which allows welfare recipients to start a business while retaining their benefits.
With the support of local enterprise courses – run by the Southside Partnership – Whelan drew on her interests and experience in complementary therapies and created a business model. Now, it’s all paying off.
“I changed my mindset by using positive affirmations and positive language instead of letting the dole queue continue to get me down,” she says. The result is Nurture Therapies –
nurturetherapies.ie. It is a holistic service helping people feel less stressed and achieve “the life of their dreams”.
It provides transformational workshops based on the philosophy of self-help author Louise Hay, and therapies such as reiki, reflexology, aromatherapy, holistic and Indian head massage. “I’ve a steady flow of clients now, mostly through word of mouth” Whelan says. “It’s helping many people, which is great.”
It’s a timely sentiment. Self-help may well be the key to how towns across the State begin to remake themselves. This future could lie in devolving more power to municipal authorities, encouraging local business, breathing new life into town centres, or a combination of all of these things. Communities, and their leaders, will have to harness their full potential to pull through and prosper.
