Noel Dempsey, Minister for the Environment and Local Government, admitted in the Dail last February that we are now "suffering" from the "appalling mistakes" made on the housing front over the years, and he expressed the hope that we have learned from these errors.
What we are living with is the legacy of the low-cost housing schemes of the early 1970s and the creation of vast, single-class ghettos on the periphery of Dublin and other cities - places such as Ballybeg, Killinarden, Neilstown, Rahoon, South Hill and Knocknaheeny.
Ballymun may have the highest profile because it has the dubious distinction of being the Republic's only high-rise housing estate - now facing demolition - but the problems of social deprivation and ghetto-like conditions are endemic in numerous other areas, even with the "Celtic Tiger" at full roar.
After taking over as Dublin city manager in June 1996, John Fitzgerald pointed out that parts of the capital - in the inner city and outer suburbs - remain "stubbornly excluded from the present economic boom" and would constitute a "real threat" to the city's well-being unless their problems were sorted out.
Contrary to the popular perception that Dublin is doing so well that it will be lucky to qualify for further EU aid after 1999, Fitzgerald noted that nine of the 11 designated areas of social deprivation nationally are in Dublin and seven of these are in the corporation area - a situation he finds intolerable.
IF we can't do something about this now, with the State's coffers laden, "what hope in hell have we got when the inevitable downturn comes around?", he asked. "And it's not just a question of fixing the bricks and mortar. We need to regenerate the communities and bring them back into the city's mainstream."
Dublin Corporation cannot tackle this problem alone. It must work with the Eastern Health Board, the Garda and a plethora of State-sponsored partnership groups, which may collapse like a house of cards when the EU money runs out after 1999. And everyone is not necessarily singing from the same hymn-sheet.
For its own part, the corporation has earmarked £85 million over five years to carry out major refurbishment schemes on some of the most degraded inner-city flat complexes and other areas of need. It has also managed to persuade the Department of the Environment to extend the definition of "housing" to include amenities.
Given some bitter experiences with refurbishment schemes in the past, when a lot of money was spent on upgrading flats only to have the value of this investment undermined by a failure to tackle wider issues, there is a new emphasis on improving the overall environment and social cohesion of public housing estates.
Fine Gael TD Austin Deasy maintains that "for every £1 spent on building houses, we should spend £1 on recreational and amenity facilities" to help overcome such social problems as drugs, crime and joy-riding. But the funds available for recreation facilities and community centres are very limited. Like other local authorities, Dublin Corporation works with the voluntary housing sector, which also provides accommodation for people on the waiting lists through such organisations as the National Association of Building Co-Operatives, NABCO, and Focus Point, founded by Sister Stanislaus Kennedy.
However, the voluntary sector is hampered by the requirement that it must raise a proportion of the capital cost of any housing scheme and by the subjection of its plans to endless scrutiny by what often seems like an army of bureaucratic monitors "who sit on your shoulder like parrots", as one local authority official put it. Dublin architect Gerry Cahill knows very well that it can literally take years to get a social housing scheme off the ground. The first phase of his plan to repair a section of New Street in the Liberties (devastated by a controversial road scheme) with a new street-front block, has taken five years from design to completion.
Other organisations with transparently good intentions encounter similar obstacles. The Irish Landmark Trust, for example, which wants to restore 30 neglected historic buildings to provide self-catering accommodation, has had to fight for every penny in State aid, going cap-in-hand to Bord Failte, among others.
At this rate, it will take years to boost the number of properties under its belt from the present three to 30. Yet the £2 million it has raised so far amounts to less than half of the money that was squandered on Celtworld, the ill-fated Bord Failte-approved project in Tramore, Co Waterford, which failed after just 18 months.
Even more shameful was the case of the State's own Heritage Council, which last year had to stop accepting fresh applications for grants from the owners of historic buildings at risk because it had run out of money. A very welcome injection of £509,000 from Arts Minister Sile de Valera will only enable it to clear the current backlog.
And though new legislation to strengthen the protection of listed buildings is now said to be "imminent", there is no indication that the Government has yet accepted one of the central recommendations of an inter-departmental working group's report in September 1996 that £5 million should be allocated annually to fund a proper grants scheme.
Yet in the context of our "Celtic Tiger" economy, £5 million is surely a drop in the ocean.
