Eddie retires after 45 eventful years with Housing Executive

In 1978, Eddie Breslin was offered a permanent job with the Northern Ireland Housing Executive. The 21-year-old was over the moon. He had been in the building trade up to then, but times were uncertain and he often found himself out of work while waiting for the next job to come up; not ideal for a young man who had gotten married just the year before.

So when he was appointed as non-resident assistant caretaker of the historic Rossville Flats, standing in the heart of Derry's Bogside, it was a role he carried out with enthusiasm from the start. The flats were the epicentre of much of the Troubles-related activity that raged in Derry at that time, and it was certainly a baptism of fire for the young Creggan native.

“In those early days especially,” said Eddie, “interesting is an understatement. It was during the Troubles and the flats were in the news every day.

IN PICTURES: Derry man Eddie Breslin retires after 45 years with NIHE

Photos: Tom Heaney (nwpresspics)

“I worked with John Dunleavey and an older man, Patrick Miller, and our role was to tidy up the place after rioting from the night before; the stairways would have glass from petrol bombs and there would be bullet holes everywhere.

“I remember the lifts were broken more times than enough. The British Army had a command post on top of the flats and if the lift ever broke down, we had to manually move it to get people out.

“You had to get the okay from the soldiers up there before you could make a move, but their personnel changed all the time and if it was soldiers who didn't know us, they took ages to give us the go-ahead because they were afraid of their lives of being ambushed.

“Many's a time it could be a couple of hours before we could get someone out of the lift, and then we would get it in the neck from the woman stuck in there with her wain, who would say, 'what kept you?'”

The three towers of the iconic flats were demolished, in stages, between 1985 and 1989, and next up for Eddie was a move to the general Bogside area. His job was to maintain the communal stairways in the flats opposite Pilot's Row, in streets such as Kells Walk and Colmcille Court.

He stayed in that position for a decade and then, in 1999, took on the role of neighbourhood warden. The job required common sense, diplomacy skills and a good sense of humour; all qualities that those who know Eddie would say he has in good measure.

He said: “My role was to deliver offers to people who had put in for properties and then show them around. I also had to deal with anti-social behaviour: people partying, or some other breach of tenancy.

“There had to be a wee bit of scare tactics; warning them that if they kept on doing what they were doing they would be asked to leave the property. “But nobody wanted that, least of all us because it meant having to find them alternative accommodation, so for me, it was always just about trying to find a way to resolve it, and the best way to do that was by engaging with people.”

Eddie's people skills and knack for helping people – especially those who are disadvantaged in some way – are qualities he believes he inherited from his late parents, Thomas (Dusty) and Dolly Breslin.

“They were very engaged in the community in Creggan,” he said. “My father, along with John Starrs, would have helped organise the men's nights in the community centre and my mother would have been heavily involved in the women's groups.

“It was right in the middle of the Troubles and that sense of community really kept a lot of people off the street during some really hard times.

“I have never been afraid to stand up for people, no matter what, and that is something I got from my mother and father.”
Eddie's natural inclination to help people, along with his successful 11-year stint as neighbourhood warden, made him the perfect choice when the role of good relations officer came up in 2010.

Under the terms of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, social housing landlords had to engage in trying to create more shared spaces, so the housing executive created a good relations team that would go out and meet with community groups and try to encourage them to interact with one another.

Achieving cross-community harmony, even during times of relative peace, can be a tough needle to thread, but Eddie's skills as a facilitator came to the fore and great strides were made.

He said: “I was based in the Waterloo Place office and you'd have representatives of community groups from the Fountain and the Bogside in a room together, and my role was to sit in and advise and mediate and assure them that the housing executive would not give one area special treatment over another in regards to improvements and initiatives, things like that.

“We weren't particular to one side or another, and I think the community groups came to trust us. We were able to fund all sorts of things: community fun days, the replacement of sectarian graffiti with something more cultural and aesthetic, the re-imaging at the Long Tower chapel and the artwork in the Brandywell displaying the Unicef charter.

“Over a million pounds was spent by the housing executive in the West area between 2010 and 2023. That area takes in 80 community groups, so that's a lot of good relations programmes and projects.”

In addition to cross-community initiatives, Eddie has been at the forefront of improving race relations, working with organisations such as the North West Migrants' Forum and the Strabane Ethnic Community Association to help people from ethnic minorities with housing issues and ensure racial equality was upheld.

It earned him the ‘Community Champion of the Year’ award at the Advancing Race Equality Awards 2022 last year, an honour he compared at the time to 'like winning an Oscar'.

Now, at the age of 67, he feels it is the right time to bow out. His immediate plan is to go on a tour, along with wife Christine, of all 32 counties in Ireland in his 1997 campervan. As he drives along, he will have plenty of time to reflect on a working life well lived.

“One of the most rewarding things for me personally,” he said, “was getting a permanent job. I worked in the building game and you were lucky getting a year at a time, so to get a permanent job was a big deal.

“The pay was never brilliant, but I was able to take out a mortgage and book holidays, things like that.

“The comradeship of it, too. I remember holding a ladder at three in the morning for a colleague as he put plywood over windows in Rosemount that were shattered when a bomb went off in the barracks – you never even questioned it; when you were called in, you were there straight away.

“Also, I wouldn't have had the opportunity to meet so many different people and go to places I would never have gone to otherwise.

“Doing this job has been an absolute pleasure.”