Remember those blocks of flats which featured in Roddy Doyle's screen version of The Snapper? They weren't just a film set. They were home to hundreds of families in the north Dublin suburb of Kilbarrack, and yesterday a crew began to demolish them. A small group stood and watched - most of them former tenants and local residents who had campaigned for years to have the flats removed.
But when a demolition ball struck the first blows to one of the eight-storey blocks in Swan's Nest Court and windows began to shatter, the former tenants were full of emotion.
Ms Sandra Gaffney lived in the flats for 13 years and wished she could revisit her flat one last time. "I feel quite sad today. Looking at all my old neighbours here, it's like a community coming down. We were all scattered and rehoused in different areas and we lost that sense of community," she said.
Pointing to a flat half-way up one of the blocks she said: "I was standing on my balcony up there watching The Snapper being filmed." Sandra, who has been rehoused in Raheny, acknowledges that there were terrible social problems around the flats in their latter years. Security was poor and outsiders could use common areas to deal in drugs.
Ms Mary Byrne lived in the flats for 15 years. "We were all so happy in those flats. We used to have great fun together," she said.
Ms Olive Byrne, former chairman of the Swan's Nest Court management committee, was part of a demonstration outside the Civic Offices in 1996 when a move to have the flats torn down began. "I'm nostalgic today. My children were reared in the flats and they were a decent place to live in at one time. But to knock them is the best thing the corporation ever did," she said.
Before the demolition ball swung into action, Dublin's Deputy Lord Mayor, Mr Brendan Carr, recalled how the 96 flats were built in the early '70s when there was a growing housing demand. The city council voted to demolish them in 1997 because of structural defects and "the negative image of the complex with tenants and local community as a result of vandalism and ongoing anti-social behaviour".
"This could be called the swansong for Swan's Nest but I prefer to call it a new beginning for the people of Kilbarrack," he said.
The site will be levelled within 10 weeks and the construction of 79 terraced houses and apartments will begin this summer. The cost of the project, incorporating a community centre, is £10 million and it is expected to be completed in just over a year.
Some of the former tenants were housed in other suburbs, while those last to leave the flats in November have been rehoused in 51 new homes built by a private developer on an adjoining site, at a cost to the corporation of £4.5 million.