The longest queue is in Dublin’s Mountjoy, where more than 240 people languish on the waitlist for counselling for substance addiction.

It’ll be used by more than the football team, said club committee member Keith O’Connell, but open to other local groups and a youth club too.

“Any blue bags that are there, we're not sure who's giving them out.”

The doors of the two-storey blocks at St Anne's Court are now boarded over. All doors, that is, but three.

Two applications have gone in in recent months for plots on the edges of the big Jamestown Business Park.

Many of the social housing projects paused recently were on vacant sites but this one is different, says a local councillor.

“I don't know how many times we have to ask to be included.”

They recite schemes that were promised, or piloted, but seem to have gone nowhere. A council spokesperson said similar initiatives still exist.

Whatever temporary measures are put in place, nothing is ever going to do the job like a big solid concrete wall, says Maynooth University’s Peter Thorne.

By Eoin Glackin Image Creative Commons Glory days (they’ll pass you by): For a generation of Irish people, myself included, mixed martial artist Conor McGregor’s relentless run through the UFC’s fe…