THE PORTRAYAL of Dublin’s south side as an exclusively affluent area has been challenged by new research which found high levels of social exclusion in the Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown area.
The research was carried out for Southside Partnership, which works with people experiencing high levels of disadvantage.
It looked at a number of factors that point to disadvantage, such as lone-parent numbers, social housing and old people living alone. It found that a number of areas in the southside catchment area repeatedly showed high relative levels of social exclusion.
The area stretches from Churchtown to Shankill and includes places such as Dalkey, Foxrock, Dundrum and Clonskeagh.
It had the third highest number of lone parents, when compared with other partnership areas around the State. Only Tallaght and Clondalkin had higher numbers of lone parents.
The southside area also came third – after Dublin inner city and Tallaght – when numbers of social housing units were compared.
It had the highest number of over 65-year-olds living alone. It came fifth for the highest number of people with no formal education, or primary education only, and third for the highest number of people with a lower secondary education.
The southside area had the highest number of people with disabilities when compared with the other partnership areas.
Electoral districts that showed high levels of social exclusion included Ballinteer-Meadowmount, Churchtown-Nutgrove, Dún Laoghaire-Sallynoggin south and Shankill-Rathsallagh.
“Social exclusion in DLR [Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown] is often invisible and more significant than portrayed in official data, in what is otherwise considered to be a relatively affluent county,” according to A Social Inclusion Profile of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown.
Marie Carroll, manager of the Southside Partnership, said the partnership previously had great difficulty in collating the numbers of people experiencing poverty and disadvantage as these pockets of disadvantage were masked by larger areas of affluence.
“This research helps us challenge the myth that DLR is a wealthy county only,” she said.
The report, by consultant Niall Watters, concluded that the numbers of people at risk of or experiencing social exclusion in the county was underestimated by the official methods used to measure social exclusion.
When numbers of disadvantaged people were compared with other areas, “the numbers in DLR are as large and in some cases larger than those in other areas”, it said.
However, because the numbers made up a smaller proportion of the population, they were not reflected in official measures of deprivation.
“In some ways therefore, the socially excluded in DLR may be more marginalised and isolated due to the perception (and official assessment) of the county as not being the location of significant pockets of social exclusion.”
