Outside a creche on Lower Rutland Street, between Mountjoy Square and the International Financial Services Centre in Dublin, dealers sell prescription drugs openly and blister packets of tablets crackle underfoot.
A local community-development worker, Karina O’Brien, explains why the area has one of the lowest voter turnouts in the country. “There’s open dealing going on,” says O’Brien, of Icon, the Inner City Organisations Network. “Elderly residents being terrorised in their homes by people coming in from outside and taking tablets in their doorways . . . “Crime is totally normalised. Jobs haven’t penetrated this area, so talk about tax breaks means nothing, and there have been huge cuts in community services in the last five years. People don’t necessarily see that voting makes any difference.”
According to Adrian Kavanagh, the Maynooth University academic who has made voter turnout a speciality, inner-city Dublin has consistently established itself as "the low-turnout area".
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Election turnouts are higher in urban areas and lower in rural ones. Still, within Dublin the differences from neighbourhood to neighbourhood are startling. Electoral divisions in Clontarf, for example, have recorded turnouts of more than 70 per cent. In parts of the nearby inner city the percentage is 30 per cent. And this is the proportion that votes out of the people who have registered, so the figure for the population as a whole is lower.
In some electoral divisions the difference comes down to a preponderance of gated developments and renting populations who have little stake in the community. In others – for example, the areas around Gardiner Street, Mountjoy Square, Summerhill, Lower Rutland Street and Sean McDermott Street, in Dublin 1 – the low turnout is also a product of political alienation.
It’s a vicious circle, says Ger Doherty, the programme co-ordinator at Lourdes Youth and Community Services (LYCS). Because people in these communities don’t vote the political system is less motivated to help them – which makes them less likely to vote.
“A lot of people indigenous to the area say that politicians are all the same, that they may be idealistic at the start but that they very soon become part of a system that isn’t interested in people,” he says. “That perspective is based on broken promises and bad living conditions.”
Doherty sighs. “It’s very hard to argue with . . . Some of the young people who argue most strongly against voting are often the ones who put the most thought into it.”
‘Now I vote how I like’
The Right 2 Change protest movement and the Union of Students of Ireland have run national voter-registration campaigns in recent months, but Doherty hasn’t heard of any groups registering people in this area.
He gives me a flyer for an event they’re running at which locals can come and discuss the election. Karina O’Brien mentions a planned “speed-dating” event, at which people can meet candidates. Doherty suggests that I come meet people from the area.
"We’ve been doing voter education as long as I’ve been here,” says Doherty. Before the local elections they approached parents at the gates of the local school. "We got between 600 and 700 people on the register. That’s a heck of a lot of people. Normally you’d struggle to get twenty in a few months."
At the LYCS, based in a building known as the schools on stilts, he introduces me to six women who form a weekly knitting circle. They listen to my questions while making cardigans and blankets. Some are more vocal than others.
Will anything change in this election? “It’s the usual promises, promises. ‘I’ll do this and that,’ and then they do nothing,” says Valerie Byrne, who has lived in the area all her life. Do they vote? “Reluctantly.”
Linda says, “I was brought up on Fianna Fáil, and that was in my head, so I had no choice but to vote for them. Now I vote how I like.”
Bernie says that she votes but her sons do not.
“That generation just don’t feel the Government is doing anything for them,” says Valerie. “There’s no work. There’s the hassle of being on the labour . . . trying to get apartments. It disheartens them, so they just give up.”
“And education is so expensive now,” says Bernie. “The young people are disheartened.”
“My son left [the country] because the Government let him down,” says Valerie. “He says: ‘This country has done nothing for me, Ma. How can I have a life and build a family?’ ”
Have people been influenced by the water protests?
“It’s a constant conversation in the pub,” says Valerie.
“It’s a big thing,” says Bernie. “My husband was on the phone before the last march – ‘I’ll meet you here. I’ll meet you there.’ He goes to all the marches.”
Will it make people more likely to vote? “There’s definitely been a change,” says Bernie.
Marian, a “blow-in” from Clontarf, observes that there’s now more political engagement in her area. “People can’t take all the extra charges and taxes.”
What are the big issues here? “At the moment, people throwing bags of dirt,” says Bernie. “It’s scandalous. People come in and throw rubbish out of their cars.”
“There’s a road you have to go down to get to the IFSC,” says Valerie. “Every Sunday they come and clean the rubbish there for the people going down to the IFSC. But around the corner, oh my God . . . You’d think they’d clean that up. That’s where children play.”
‘Right on my corner’
And then there’s the drug dealing.
“Right on my corner,” says Valerie. “When people ask me where I live I just say the Bronx. You can get what you want: hash, speed, E, heroin, grass.”
“It’s prescription drugs at the moment,” says Bernie.
“It’s going into the third generation of families,” says Valerie. “You see a 14-year-old selling it and giving to the eight-year-old to take it around the corner. There’s no future for the kids down there . . . They used to hide it. Now they don’t care. They fight with you.”
Homelessness is another pressing issue. “There’s a local group that’s set up bringing out food and blankets,” says Bernie.
“That’s the Inner City Helping Homeless group,” Karina O’Brien explains. “About two years ago a load of people got together in Lloyds pub to do something. They got SuperValu to donate food, and they started going out at night. Now they have an office.”
“It was just a bunch of local people who played bingo,” says Valerie. “Now there’s young people involved. You look at some of them and say, ‘You wouldn’t think he’d be doing that!’”
The group are distributing statistics on homelessness and questions to ask politicians. “Young people who would never have asked a question of a politician,” says O’Brien. This is so they can “have something ready”.
“I can’t wait till the politicians come to the door,” says Valerie. “I hope I’ll be up to high doh with my hormones and menopause.”
“You’ll be up for murder, Valerie,” says Marian.
They talk about politicians in the neighbourhood. “People vote for Christy Burke because he’s loyal,” says Bernie (Burke’s posters declare him to be “one of your own”).
Mary Lou McDonald of Sinn Fein, says Linda, “is everywhere”.
Valerie reveals that she once voted Fine Gael.
“You didn’t!” says Linda in mock outrage.
“I’ll vote for Nick the Devil if he gets my windows done,” says Valerie.
Are people more or less likely to vote this time?
“They’re more likely to vote now,” says Valerie.
“People are sick of everything,” says Bernie.
“I was amazed so many people were coming up to the protests, buses from the country,” says Valerie. “People have had enough.”
“I can’t see who’s going to get in,” says Bernie. “But they’ll come up with something.” She sighs. “And then they’re going to be the same anyway.”
‘The left is coming into play’
Nearby six people are taking a pottery class. They’re a bit less talkative than the knitting group. Each is focused on a pot, a figurine or, in one instance, a replica of a human face.
“I think the water charges activated the classes not normally represented by voting,” says Ray Wall, who’s actually from Malahide. “Up to now, if they voted Fianna Fáil out they were voting Fine Gael in and vice versa. People stopped feeling like they had a choice. Now is the first time that people see the left is coming into play.”
“I was always Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael,” says Sarah. “But then they let down the country. It’s the independents or Sinn Féin.”
Marie McGurk doesn’t vote. “It’s the same thing all the time,” she says. “All promises. I used to vote. I’m registered, but now I don’t bother . . . People are dumping rubbish everywhere. They don’t care any more. They’re sick of everything. They find it very hard. The reason we turn off is we’re promised the world and then it goes out the window.”
‘Just talking, talking’
“People are engaged in surviving from one month to another, not really engaged in politics,” says a young Polish woman, Maggie Anna Glubiak.
Though Maggie can’t vote here she’d like to set up her own party, “a new general party about everything: immigration issues, the environment. I go out with my dogs, and there’s trash after trash after trash. People dump things on the road.
“There’s no party gives you faith in anything different. Just talking, talking, talking – and nothing changes.”
In the community training centre Tom O’Reilly, its manager, tells me about the young people educated here. He’s proud of them. He doesn’t like them being stereotyped and maligned.
“If you’re a young person in the north inner city wearing a tracksuit and hoody on the way somewhere,” he says, “there’s a fair chance of being stopped and searched. Every morning our young people are stopped and searched.”
Are they political? “If anger is politicising then, yes, they are political,” O’Reilly says. But he sometimes worries that they are “just angry” – “They feel powerless because it seems to be such a hopeless place for young people.”
He brings me into a small meeting room where seven very young men tell me that they’re uninterested in politics.
Why? “Politicians just don’t care about this area,” says Luke.
Does he really think so? He looks at me like I’m mad. “Look at the state of the place: the drug dealers, the rubbish. Maybe [politicians] are doing something for people in Blackrock. They’re not doing anything in Dublin 1.”
Were the water-charge protests big around here?
“My maths teacher was really into it,” says Chad. “He was going mental over it. Whenever we had maths he would take us out of class to go to the protests.”
Did he go? “No, I didn’t! I just went home. I’m not standing around with a sign.”
What do they know about the water charges? “That no one’s paying them,” says Ciaran.
Have the protests made their families or neighbours more political? There’s a number of murmured nos, but Luke says: “I suppose some people are paying a bit more attention to politics because of the water charges.”
What about the marriage-equality referendum? “I wanted to vote for that, but I was too young then,” says Luke with noticeably more enthusiasm.
Why did he care about that so much? “It was something that matters. Anybody should have the right to marriage. You fall in love with a person, not a gender. That was a straightforward Yes.”
He turns to the others. “Would you have voted Yes for that?” he asks.
They all nod, although only one of them was old enough to vote then. (He didn’t vote.) “There was only one county in Ireland with a higher No percentage than Yes,” says Chad. “I saw a map. The whole country was green. That county was red.”
“It’d be a bit funny voting No,” says Luke. “There are plenty of gay people around this area, and we all know them.”
‘Them stupid posters’
Is there a good sense of community around here? “It’s the best community you can find,” says Luke. “But that doesn’t turn into politics.”
“People take care of each other,” says Ciaran.
“Every corner you see seven cousins,” says Chad. “Everyone’s related.”
A lot of their mothers vote, they say. “My mam brings my nanny around to vote,” says Mark.
Who do their mothers vote for? They don’t know, for the most part. “Mine votes for Joe Costello,” says Luke, referring to the Labour TD. “But I don’t have to do what my ma does. He’s done a lot getting people houses, but sometimes he’s a dose bag.” He sighs. “In the next few weeks those streets will be flooded with them stupid posters.”
“Those things are dangerous,” says Chad. “I saw one fly off a pole and cut a man’s face open.”
“Think of how much money it takes to put them around,” says Luke. “Think what that money could do.”
What things would they like to change around here? There’s a pause. “Getting stopped all the time by the police,” says Eric, who was stopped this morning.
Do they get stopped much? “Every morning,” says Chad. “We can’t walk out your front door without being pulled in. In Blackrock you could walk around with bundles of drugs and they’d just walk by you.”
“What people in Blackrock see when they open the door is not what I see when I open mine,” says Luke, sighing.
What if someone said they’d stop those searches?
“You can’t stop them,” says Chad.
“Gardaí can do anything they want,” says Luke.
“Can these politicians have a say in what gets voted on?” asks Chad. “Because I know how to win an election: say, ‘I’m going to legalise weed.’ ”
They laugh. I tell Chad about Luke “Ming” Flanagan.
Luke considers the question again. “Homelessness, litter, drug abuse,” he says. “I don’t like to see it around my area. I have a four-year-old little brother. I had to grow up around that, but I don’t want him growing up around that.
“It’s getting worse, to be honest. As a kid I wasn’t really paying attention to all the drugs and homeless. But when you turn 12 you start to see it. And then you get used to it.”
“I’d get the drug addicts off the streets,” says Chad.
“Where would you put them?” asks Luke.
“In the grave,” says Chad. “They’re out there trying to mug people!”
“But why do they start taking drugs?” says Luke. “Because they got f***ed out of their gaffs and they’ve nothing else to do. They probably need drugs just to get through the day.”
“I got f***ed out of my gaff, and you didn’t see me doing that,” says one of the young men.
What if a politician were promising to help drug addicts and the homeless? “They should be doing that now!” says Luke.
Are they registered to vote? Some of them were registered at the centre before Christmas.
Will they vote? “No,” says Eric quietly. “I don’t want to.”
“He doesn’t think it’ll make a difference,” says Luke. “I don’t care about it either, to be honest,” says Ciaran.
“I don’t understand the parties,” says Chad. “Sinn Féin, Fine Gael: I honestly have no clue about the difference. They’re all in it for the money.”
“Not all of them,” says Luke.
There’s a discussion about politicians they know and like, such as Gary Gannon, a Social Democrats candidate who once worked at LYCS.
“I will never vote in my life,” promises Chad. “When I’m older I’ll be sitting back making money, living out in Clontarf. If this place is in a heap I won’t give a rat’s.”
“But what about your mates? Your family?” asks Luke.
“They’ll all be coming out there with me,” says Chad.
“He’ll be a councillor in 20 years,” says Luke.
Luke, it turns out, is the only one interested in voting. Who will he vote for? “I don’t know yet. But I’ll do a little background check on a few people. Then we’ll see.”
Later, Karina O’Brien from Icon says that the water protest movement is less significant here than elsewhere. (“There are so many issues that are more immediate”.) People were engaged by marriage equality, and many are currently active about homelessness. If anything, she says, the latter might mobilise people to vote.
Diana O’Dwyer, running for the Anti-Austerity Alliance, is optimistic. She feels people have been mobilised by marriage equality; the campaign to repeal the eighth amendment; water protests; and housing issues.
“I got the supplementary register, and there were thousands of new people on it,” O’Dwyer says. “I think this election is going to be quite significant in terms of new people who haven’t registered before.”
This is the hope on the left in general. Recent elections saw big increases in turnout in many urban working-class communities, which led to increased support for left-wing and Independent candidates.
“In those areas, I think, a new political engagement probably will translate into electoral support and increased turnout rates,” says Claire McGing, a geography lecturer at Maynooth University. That’s assuming the parties have done their homework, she adds.
The Independent TD Maureen O’Sullivan isn’t so sure that this will happen in the inner city, where she has found turnouts disappointing. O’Sullivan does say she is impressed by the relative enthusiasm of young people and new citizens. However, “I can’t say I’ve noticed any voter-registration drives around this area.”
She sometimes wishes Ireland had the Australian model, she says, "where people have to vote. Where they have no choice."
