ABSTRACT
Social Housing in Ireland, the book that described our original study of the seven neighbourhoods in 1997–8, noted the centrality of social order in discussions about liveability and the quality of life on the seven neighbourhoods and, in its conclusion, suggested that the presence or absence of social order marked the distinction between housing ‘success’ and ‘failure’:
The prevalence of anti-social behaviour and the absence of a sense that order and civility can be taken for granted is the single biggest problem in troubled local authority estates. Most settled estates are characterised by the absence of this problem.
(Fahey, 1999, p. 257) This chapter revisits the theme of social (dis)order a decade later and examines the views and experience of residents, community leaders, and service providers in the seven case-study neighbourhoods on this issue. Following on from this, the role and capacity of the two statutory agencies – the local authorities and the Gardaí – tasked with the responsibility for maintaining social order in the neighbourhoods are discussed and assessed. A number of themes raised in the preceding chapter on Drug Use and Drugs Markets are explored further in this chapter, which revisits the theme of the drugs economy/violence nexus.