14 Facts About Ballymun

Ballymun is an outer suburb of Dublin, Ireland, at the northern edge of the Northside, the green-field development of which began in the 1960s to accommodate a housing crisis in inner city areas of Dublin.

Ballymun has several sub-districts such as Sillogue, Coultry, Shangan and Poppintree, and is close to both the Republic of Ireland's only IKEA store and to Dublin Airport.

In 1829, the Freeman's Journal noted that Ballymun was a popular place for duels.

At the time of its construction, Ballymun was a sought-after location and prospective tenants had to pass an interview to get housing there.

Ballymun noted that the concept envisaged the shopping centre being available from the start, but delayed for years, and the issues with lift and centralised heating system maintenance.

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Ballymun offered to build them 2,500 housing units at a time when their own housing development programme had to be ramped up and when you had the additional misfortune of the collapse of the tenement blocks in Fenian Street which meant that Dublin Corporation was bounced into dealing with all of its condemned houses at once.

Over time, Ballymun became notorious for a number of social problems, such as drug abuse and unemployment, and was impacted by negative media coverage of the area.

Current Ballymun district is not substantially in the townland historically called "Ballymun" — instead, it occupies several nearby townlands, the most significant of which is Stormanstown.

Streets have been renamed — for example, Ballymun Avenue was renamed Glasnevin Avenue after a local plebiscite in the 1970s.

City architect commented in 2015 that the "killer blow" for Ballymun was the offering of a tenant-purchase scheme in 1985, which gave good terms for local authority tenants to buy out their accommodation, but only if they had a house, not a flat, which led to many committed community members moving from Ballymun to be able to avail of the offer.

Ballymun is served by a number of Dublin Bus routes to the city centre including the numbers 4,13 and the 155 while the 17a and 220 both heading towards Blanchardstown, the former coming from Kilbarrack.

Ballymun is a parish in the Fingal South West deanery of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin.

Ballymun is in the jurisdiction of Dublin City Council, and for local elections it is part of the Finglas-Ballymun local electoral area.

Decades, Ballymun's reputation was damaged by a high level of negative publicity in the media, usually focusing on crime and drugs, whilst ignoring positive news.