Dublin City Council dedicates €3.8m to rejuvenate city centre following 2023 riots

The city council's tender documents for the contract note that the riots, which resulted in property damage costing in the region of €20m, had 'deeply affected the city'. File Picture: RollingNews.ie

Dublin City Council is to spend €3.8m on a dedicated unit for the “rejuvenation” of the city centre in response to riots over two years ago that "deeply affected the city".

The local authority has tendered a four-year contract for a professional services firm tasked with establishing a dedicated project management unit and special purpose vehicle.

Dublin’s north inner city has been plagued by petty crime and allegedly unsafe streets for several years.

These issues came to a head after thousands rioted on O’Connell St in the wake of the stabbing of a five-year-old schoolgirl in the area on November 23, 2023.

The city council's tender documents for the contract note that the riots, which resulted in property damage costing in the region of €20m, had “deeply affected the city”.

It noted that in the aftermath, a city co-ordination office had been set up within the local authority with the “unified goal” of making Dublin a “more vibrant, safe, and appealing city”.

In order to achieve that aim, a group of stakeholders — including gardaí, the National Transport Authority, Fáilte Ireland, and the HSE — were brought together to form an action group to identify the “key issues” which had “negatively impacted Dublin’s city centre”.

The group identified three action areas: Safety, movement and transport, and the "public realm".

Best practice

The local authority said it had conducted research in terms of best practice for the achievement of similar urban rehabilitation entities both at home and abroad, including Limerick Twenty Thirty and the Greater London Authority.

The three overriding goals of the project will be more people living in Dublin’s city centre; streets that “look cleaner and feel safer”; and a “healthy, vibrant, always-on city that respects its heritage”, the authority said.

To that end, 10 specific targets have been set which will be the broad responsibility of the new dedicated unit.

They include the revitalisation of O’Connell St and the surrounding areas, the “total regeneration” of social housing complexes in the city centre, the conversion of derelict sites into high-density residential offerings for essential workers, and the hiring of an additional 1,000 gardaí to police the area.

The focus of that work will be a specific area of the inner city, stretching from Gardiner St adjacent to the International Financial Services Centre business hub to the east and the recently pedestrianised Capel St to the west on the far side of O’Connell St, the local authority said.