(Oh I might just add here that finding out you were from Ballymun in the first place was usually enough to make them look for the closest exit, should you at any moment wish to dive across the table and beat them to a pulp for no reason what so ever.
ah the media you gotta love'em)

After a few seconds, when they had recovered their composure and realised that they still had all their own teeth and full independent use of their limbs and that their current state of good health was likely to remain long after you had left their company, they would push on with their questions.

They always said the word flat with a little extra venom. Giving it a couple of extra t's on the end, so flat became 'flat-t'. This was of course done to underline their total distain for both that way of living (now known as apartment living) and also for the people who lived there.

And if I can remember: how they pronounced house was not much better.

So how to answer? Sometimes the "wrong" answer might mean getting a job and not getting a job. Getting into a school or not, and so on.

When I look back to Ballymun from the long distance of Australia, and think about the amount of difficulties and prejudices that the people had to face through no fault of their own it leaves you aghast.

When I look back to Ballymun from my 15th floor office block in the heart of Perth's CBD and I think about how far I have come I often wonder what if....

What if I had stayed in Ballymun: Would I be an advisor to the Taoiseach Mr Bertie Ahern as I am to the his equivalent here in Australia? (I doubt it.) But it would be nice to think that you now could.

The Ballymun of 1975 to 1988 that I and my contemporaries knew was a cold, grey dark place. Devoid of hope or opportunity for many. To a great extent treated by successive Governments as the land that time and money and they forgot.

But that was just the infrastructure and Government neglect that kept pulling people down. Transcending all these impediments were the very same people who refused to be beaten.

The spirit of community that I felt in Ballymun has never been matched in all my travels (thanks to my job) around the world.

And as the towers and the flats are being pulled down once and for all. I hope also are the negative and unfounded preconceptions that the rest of Ireland had about Ballymun once and for all.