From the newswire: €170,000 was the price paid for the house that I am living in, in a new development in Portlaoise. I am not happy to have discovered that European Union (Czech Republic) workers are being paid €3 an hour on the site.

Recently my father bought a house at Fairgreen Village (a new post-modern living development) in Portlaoise. A woman that we know, who has been finding it very difficult to secure employment in Portlaoise, was offered a job (by another Eastern European person) cleaning out houses after they had been built, to get them ready for the purchasers to move in. She accepted the job and after the first day told me that she was being paid about €40 for ten hours’ work. This was on day one of the job.

When I informed her that this was illegal and that we have minimum pay wage agreements, she told me that she knows but that is what Eastern European workers are paid, and must be satisfied with it. On the second day she was offered €20 for six hours work – a little more than €3 an hour. The woman refused to work for so little, but her friend stayed on. When the woman said that it was illegal, her would-be contractor (a woman from Latvia I think, who I presume to be sub-contracting from the developers, Owenass Developers) she was asked why is she looking for work since she is seeing an Irishman?

UPDATE: Owenass Developers have met with Mark and have guaranteed that all workers employed directly by them are getting at least minimum wage and that they will make subcontractors sign a declaration to the same effect.

O'Devaney Gardens (ODG) is a local authority housing estate comprised of just under 300 flats, located at the end of the North Circular Road in the west of the inner city. It is a 16-acre site adjacent to the Phoenix Park, close to the Red LUAS line, Heuston Station and within walking distance of the city centre, the 'new' Smithfield and the courts district. At present Dublin City Council (DCC) have put out a tender for redeveloping the entire site. Three private developers are in the running for the awarding of the tender. The plan for development has not been finalised yet, and the tenants of ODG are unsure of what the final outcome of the transformation of their home will look like.

I met up with Lena Jordan, who is a community worker in ODG, and who is also involved with Tenants First, a citywide grassroots organisation of tenants from local authority flat complexes facing redevelopment or regeneration. We talked in the community flat in one of the blocks. While looking around before our conversation, I could see the depressingly familiar site of boarded-up units dotted around the complex. Approximately 10% of the housing stock is currently unoccupied, despite a waiting list for people to be housed. There have been no new allocations since the site was earmarked for redevelopment four years ago; a de-tenanting process which has been mirrored in other cases such as St. Michael's Estate and Dolphin House in the south inner city.

In response to the death of Mark Glennon, the following article appeared on the Indymedia newswire under the byline Blanch4life. While the crime reporters for the rest of the media can report breathlessly about the "westies" and the politicians and Guards can outdo each other with get tough responses, this article looks at why the trade that Mark Glennon and his brother supposedly died over took such a hold in D15 and what the celtic tiger is actually delivering for those who have jobs. People protested in Dublin this weekend at the deaths of two people left behind by our Celtic Tiger economy, and tried to find out why some citizens in the North are so alienated - who'll speak for those riding the tiger out in Blanch?

"So, what's the answer to all this? How do you stop young men becoming involved in gang culture? The traditional left wing answer is that the area is economically depressed, a 'blackspot', and needs more investment in jobs as well as extra Garda on the beat to combat crime. This may have been true in the 80's and even up to the mid 90's, but it is a blinkered response to the reality of Blanchardstown today. The Celtic Tiger is there in full effect..."