Will it take a tragedy to get estates fixed?

For two years, Seamus Boland of Irish Rural Link was like a broken record.

Stop bickering about whether the estates should be razed or used to wipe out the country’s 100,000-strong local authority waiting list. Forget about demonising developers who created this mess. Forget about chasing developers to fund the cleaning up of these estates.

The number one priority, he said, was to make these “deathtraps” safe.