Around 75 community and housing activists from across the city gathered in the Macro Community Resource Centre on North King St last night, for the launching of a new Tenants First booklet, entitled "The Real Guide to Regeneration for Communities: Making The Right Decision About Urban Regeneration". The booklet has been in production for several months, and five thousand copies have been printed up for distribution around local authority flat complexes and housing estates right across Dublin City.

The booklet was produced not as a leaflet to be shoved through letterboxes, but rather as a tool that local communities can use in facilitating workshops and discussions when faced with regeneration (which based on the contributions from the floor last night, seems to be widespread and increasing). "12 steps to making the right decision about regeneration" are mapped out, and take tenants from the initial stages of finding out information and understanding what is happening, to organising your own agenda, getting resources and fighting for what you want.

Three speakers, Joe Donohue from Fatima Groups United, John Bissett from St Michael's Estate, and Lena Jordan from O'Devaney Gardens gave a brief outline of their experiences to date of the regeneration process. They talked of how each of their communities had experienced difficulties with Dublin City Council, at all stages of the planning and organisation. Also prevalent was the continuing presence of PPPs (Public Private Partnerships) in redevelopments. The results of PPPs were varied, but inevitably lead to the reduction in the number or physical space afforded to social housing, and an increase in housing densities coupled with a loss of open space areas.

I met up with Maria MhicMheanmain in a small redbrick terraced house in the shadow of Croke Park in Summerhill. She's involved in the campaign against the opening of a new strip club and "adult entertainment" venue on Parnell Street, run by English businessman Peter Stringfellow. The club has already began to advertise in the Irish media and recruitment websites for positions (no pun intended) in the club.

The campaign against Stringfellows was started by a woman called Vera Brady, who lives on Parnell Street. Her family have been there for a hundred years, over several generations. Maria and Vera have known each other a long time, with connections through their families. Maria says, "We dont have a name on our group yet, its just a group of concerned residents who dont want to see this club open in this location. Vera organised Matt Talbot hall for our first public meeting, and also did extensive leaflet drops in the area in order to get local people along.

"The first I heard of the proposed strip club on Parnell Street was on TV on a Friday night, the Late Late Show, a number of weeks ago. My initial reaction was, Christ, where they're planning on building a lapdancing club is less than a minute's walk away from my old secondary school (Mount Carmel). I was aware of a lapdancing club in Galway which opens at midday, and I was enraged that the possibility existed of men queueing up to get into a club like this, while young teenage girls were in the immediate vicinity on their lunch break."