Residents in some of the modern council apartment blocks off Sheriff Street in Dublin are calling for their demolition, saying living in them has become unbearable due to anti-social behaviour on their doorstep.
Tenants of seven small blocks of apartments blame the design, which they say enables people to enter and use the common areas to drink, doss, take drugs, dump stolen goods, defecate, sleep and even have sex.
"I have come out in the morning loads of times and found used condoms there for the kids to see," says Ashling Doran, who has been seeking a transfer out for eight years.
The mother of four, who works in the local primary school as an after-school helper, says her eldest son Daryl (11) is afraid to go outside their front door.
"He was out there a year or so ago and came flying back in here in hysterics. There was a fella asleep on the stairs with a syringe sticking out of his arm. Daryl thought the chap was dead."
Another woman, who did not want to be named, says she came out of her apartment in the past month to find "a woman and two men having sex on the stairs".
Though the front doors on the ground floors of these three- storey blocks have locks, all have been broken, leaving them open to anyone.
In every block yesterday, the mail boxes were either vandalised or gone altogether, the front doors all swinging open freely and graffiti all over the stairwells.
None of the front doorbells was working, the stairs themselves were strewn with wrappers, cigarette butts and general filth, and stolen bikes were dumped under the stairs.
One main electricity circuit board was vandalised and in several blocks there was an overpowering stench of urine.
Ms Doran says another of her children was involved in an accident during the winter, in which he lost a finger. The lights in the stairwell were not working and the ambulance man searched for the finger-tip with a torch.
Local Labour Party councillor Aodhán Ó Ríordáin shows where a fire had been lit "by some lads" under the stairs on the ground floor of one block, three weeks ago.
"The fire alarm wasn't working so everyone was lucky it happened during the day. But look here," he says, pointing out smoke damage clearly visible.
"The council promised this area would be blocked off and cleaned up - but still nothing.
"On a recent walk around them, I had to physically remove human excrement left on the stairwell of one block."
Mr Ó Ríordáin, who teaches in the local national school, says he tells his pupils "every day to be proud of where they are from".
"But how can they be proud when this is the reality that confronts them every day?"
He echoes calls from tenants for the demolition of the 10-year- old apartments and the construction of accommodation where residents would each have their own secure front door.
Brendan Hayden, executive officer in the council's housing maintenance section, says his staff are aware of the issues raised by tenants but says there is "no design problem with the apartments". The problem is "with people" using the stairwells for anti-social behaviour.
Mr Hayden says demolition is out of the question, as the apartment blocks are just 10 years old, while secure locks on the main front doors would "raise health and safety issues with people being locked in".
"There is a committee looking at the anti-social issues and what needs to be done and we will work with the tenants."
One option, he says, would be to reduce the number of apartments in each block and give each an on-street front door.
