Dublin City Council plans to allocate €3.8 million toward a specialised unit aimed at the “rejuvenation” of the city centre following riots more than two years ago that “deeply affected the city”.
According to the Irish Examiner, the council has issued a tender for a four-year contract to appoint a professional services company to set up a dedicated project management unit and a special purpose vehicle, reports Breaking News.
For several years, Dublin’s north inner city has struggled with low-level criminal activity and streets that are widely considered unsafe.
Tensions escalated when thousands took part in riots on O’Connell St after the stabbing of a five-year-old schoolgirl in the area on November 23rd, 2023, reports Breaking News.
Tender documentation from the city council states that the riots, which caused property damage estimated at around €20m, had “deeply affected the city”.
The documents added that, in response, a city co-ordination office was established within the local authority with the “unified goal” of transforming Dublin into a “more vibrant, safe, and appealing city”, reports Breaking News.
To help realise that objective, a range of stakeholders — including gardaí, the National Transport Authority, Fáilte Ireland, and the HSE — were assembled into an action group tasked with pinpointing the “key issues” that had “negatively impacted Dublin’s city centre”.
That group outlined three priority areas for action: Safety, movement and transport, and the “public realm”, reports Breaking News.
The council said it examined best-practice examples for comparable urban regeneration efforts at home and internationally, citing initiatives such as Limerick Twenty Thirty and the Greater London Authority.
The authority explained that the project’s three main ambitions are to boost the number of residents living in Dublin’s city centre, ensure streets that “look cleaner and feel safer”, and develop a “healthy, vibrant, always-on city that respects its heritage”, reports Breaking News.
To support these objectives, 10 defined targets have been established, which will largely fall under the remit of the newly created dedicated unit.
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