Dublin City Council admits it ‘needs to get on front foot’ amidst ‘epidemic’ of arson attacks on homes
A senior Dublin City Council (DCC) housing official admitted that the authority needs to “get on the front foot” in relation to antisocial behaviour in the capital’s social housing complexes.
It comes amidst a spate of high-profile arson attacks on council tenants and a reported 2,415 occurrences of antisocial behaviour across its housing complexes over the course of last year.
“It was a busy year, 2025,” Claire Dempsey of DCC’s estate management unit told councillors this week, adding that of those incidents, 103 would fall into the most severe category.
Her colleague Mick Clarke agreed, saying that the rate of people being burnt out of their homes had now reached “epidemic” proportions.
"I had six cases. I’m now down to three where families are burned out,” he said.
Mr Clarke said when a home is burned out, the tenants are moved away from “the danger area”, despite the fact that tenants usually want to stay in the same part of the city.
This is for three main reasons, he said. “Reason one, it’s the safety, if someone is burnt out, and we do the house back up and put them back in, there could be a fatality and we’d be asked: ‘why the hell did you put them back in?’
"The second reason is we have a duty of care to the neighbours and the community as a whole...And the third one is, it’s a huge amount of money…to bring that house back into a liveable condition.”
Frank d’Arcy, executive manager of DCC’s housing operations, told councillors he was “very conscious that antisocial behaviour is something that we in DCC need to get on the front foot in relation to.”
In order to address the surge in attacks and antisocial behaviour, the council is assembling a working group on the matter over the next month which would involve councillors, staff and relevant departments of the authority.
Councillors were positive about the news, but aired many grievances about how the antisocial behaviour process works at the moment.
Sinn Féin councillor Daithí Doolan said the people behind the most severe attacks “need to be faced down”.
“I get the impression from the council, maybe I’m wrong and I’m open to correction, but they will pursue people who are in rent arrears, but those involved in this serious criminal activity appear to be, there’s more leniency shown towards them,” he said.
Independent councillor Cieran Perry said the council were in many cases “subsidising drug dealers working out of our properties”.
"[There are] people on the housing list for 10, 12, 15 years [that] are wondering, why can’t I get a house when drug dealers are getting houses? That’s an issue. That’s a serious issue,” he said.
Mr Perry also criticised the fact that the personal use of drugs wasn’t classed as antisocial behaviour by the council, and said potential tenants’ partners should also be vetted alongside the applicants.
Mr d’Arcy said these, along with other issues, would be dealt with by the working group, which would aim to report back by the end of the year.
Its findings would then be fed into an updated council strategy beginning in 2028.