Goodbye O'Devaney Gardens

It's known in the trade as a "wet demolition". Despite the fire hoses the dust is everywhere, thick layers of it on the nearby cars and trucks. Hydraulic excavators pull and claw, peck and pummel away, surrounded by piles of rubble. They're pulling down the flats at last.

O'Devaney Gardens: three videos

To some TV viewers, O'Devaney Gardens stands for a fictional block of dilapidated flats in Dublin where Ado (Mark Dunne) has a bolthole in Love/Hate.

To some politicians, O'Devaney Gardens is a real-life housing estate in Stoneybatter that shouldn't be knocked down just yet but should be temporarily renovated, then demolished: a €4.7 million sticking plaster for the housing crisis instead of a permanent solution. Talk about half-baked.