Phased return to work across all sectors

Taking Care of our Physical and Mental Wellbeing in Fingal

COVID-19 is a major public health emergency here in Ireland and around the world and is having a big impact on our lives. Everyone has made a huge eff ort to stop the spread of the virus and to save lives. Thank You! To help us all get through this diffi cult ti me, it’s important that we take care of everyone in our community – and also look aft er our own physical and mental wellbeing. That’s why Nati onal & local Government as well as our voluntary and community sectors have been working together on a wide range of wellbeing initi ati ves to help you in three ways:

To help you look aft er your mental wellbeing

With day-to-day coping advice from Healthy Ireland, lots of creati ve things to do like gardening, cooking, play for children, special supports for young people and their parents, and lots more.

To help you stay acti ve

With in-home exercise ideas from sporti ng organisati ons and athletes, healthy eati ng advice – and guidance on how to enjoy the outdoors.

To help you stay connected

With online libraries, cultural tours, galleries and book clubs, ti ps on helping in your own community, online workshops and online supports for learners of all ages to help us stay connected.

Here are just a few examples of what’s happening in Fingal:

Fingal Digifi t – A home workout video series encouraging citi zens of all ages and abiliti es to get fi t during the COVID-19 crisis. Wellbeing Acti vity Booklet – Developed by the COVID-19 Fingal Community Response Project for older and housebound people currently cocooning. Tips for Young People - Fingal Comhairle na nÓg have provided ti ps on how young people can spend their spare ti me. Community Hubs – Elderly vulnerable citi zens receive a daily visit from community volunteers observing social distancing.

Online Arts Service - Fingal Arts Offi ce is providing online clinics for Arti sts and are live streaming arts projects. Kids Skills Challenge – A daily online sports challenge to encourage children to keep acti ve. Housing Informati on Videos – A suite of informati ve videos for citi zens needing to access housing support services during the COVID-19 crisis. Stay Connected – A YouTube channel from Fingal Libraries with storyti mes, online classes, craft ideas and lots more being added weekly.

Discover wellbeing resources to help you and your family at gov.ie/together, and fi nd out what’s happening in Fingal at fi ngal.ie | #inthistogether

Books for Traveller Children – A book gift ing initi ati ve which is distributi ng gift bags to Traveller children across the county. Irish Language Challenge – A 21 day online Irish language challenge to increase your cúpla focal. Informati on on all these wellbeing acti viti es and a lot more is available from fi ngal.ie and Fingal County Council’s social media channels.

Have your say: Fingal Voices App is live now

Lusk United A.F.C. were recently delighted to hear that they were one of seven club-winners across Fingal in this year’s Fingal County Council’s Sustainability Competition. Fingal County Council recently held a competition for all Fingal based soccer and rugby clubs to identify and commit to introducing three environmentally sustainable actions. The winning projects range from eliminating single-use plastic bottles/coffee cups from the grounds and club rooms, installing a water refill-point for reusable water bottles to introducing a sports gear swap shop for boots and jerseys. The initiatives also include actively encouraging green travel by walking and cycling to the club grounds, an action day or a children’s poster competition.

Lusk Utd A.F.C. Wins Sports Sustainability Competition

Fingal County Council’s Fingal Voices public consultation app is now publicly available.After some months of beta testing, the new mobile application called Fingal Voices is now publicly available on app stores. The app enables Fingal County Council residents to participate in decisionmaking, make their voices heard and engage with their local government in an innovative and fun manner.Residents can access public consultations directly via the smartphone app and will accrue points through their engagement which are convertible for vouchers and gifts at various local retail partners.Users can vote, rate and comment on specific consultations and questionnaires, submit ideas and suggest improvements, and access local and community news and events information.This is an additional service available to Fingal residents and does not replace the existing consultation mechanisms such as the Fingal County Council Consultation Portal. The app is available for Android at https://play.google.com/store/apps/ details?id=io.smartfutures.fingal.unheard_voices&ah=msoN0fTqJeJ6gFV8 pZGFsntfPVI and can be accessed for Apple devices at:https://apps.apple. com/us/app/fingal-voices/id1463183382

The seven winning clubs are: Lusk United AFC, Portmarnock AFC, St. Ita’s, St. Mochta’s, Swords Celtic, Garda Association F.C. and Garda Westmanstown Rugby Club. Each club will receive payments of €2,000 to be invested in their projects.AnnMarie Farrelly, Chief Executive of Fingal County Council, said: “I wish to congratulate all the clubs on their winning applications and wish them all the best with implementing the projects in the months ahead.” The Executive Committee of Lusk United expressed their gratitude to those involved for

Phase 1 Roadmap for Reopening Society and Business

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted our lives. Now, thanks to your pati ence and sacrifi ce, we are taking the fi rst steps on a 5-phase reopening of our country. It is important to be aware of Public Health restricti ons and guidance:

1Work from home if you can. Bear in mind that most workplaces, especially offices, remain closed.

2The 5km limit applies to outdoor exercise, social visits and visits to public amenities.

3Social distancing, hygiene measures and coughing and sneezing etiquette must always be observed. Wash your hands regularly.

4Stay home and self-isolate if sick.

These are some of the things that change from Monday, 18th May:

5Older and vulnerable people who are cocooning should stay indoors, apart from brief outdoor exercise.

Community Health

Educati on & Childcare

Small groups of up to 4 people – family or friends – may meet outdoors within 5km of home. It is recommended that face coverings be worn in public places such as shops and on busy public transport — go to gov.ie for guidance and advice on face coverings. Always maintain social distancing. Exercise must take place within 5km of home. School and college buildings may reopen for teachers and staff for the organisati on and distributi on of learning materials, related acti viti es and essenti al administrati on The purpose of school and college opening is solely to facilitate remote learning.

Economic Acti vity & Work

Constructi on workers where it is safe to do so can return to work. Farmers’ markets, gardeners and other outdoor workers return to work: social distancing requirements conti nue to apply. Remote working conti nues for all others that can do so. The Return to Work Safely Protocol is the operati ve guide for employers and employees.

Retail, Services & Commercial Acti vity

Certain essenti al retailers and service providers may reopen – see below. Garden centres and other retail outlets that are primarily outdoors may reopen. Remote working conti nues for all who can do so. The Return to Work Safely Protocol is the operati ve guide for employers and employees.

Cultural & Social

Outdoor public ameniti es and tourism sites, e.g. carparks, beaches and mountain walks may reopen provided social distancing can be maintained. Outdoor public sports ameniti es, e.g. playing pitches, tennis courts and golf courses may reopen provided that social distancing can be maintained. Outdoor sporti ng and fi tness acti viti es, either individually or in groups of no more than four people, are permitt ed provided that social distancing can be maintained and there is no physical contact. Note that the 5km from home restricti on applies to all outdoor acti vity.

Transport & Travel

Non-essenti al overseas travel should be avoided.

The following are the main retail acti viti es that may operate from 18th May for essenti al supplies and services:

Food, beverages and newspapers (retail and wholesale) Household consumer products for safety and sanitati on of homes and businesses Pharmacies and retailers providing pharmaceuti cals or dispensing services Opti cians/Optometrists outlets providing hearing test services, selling hearing aids and appliances Retail of medical and orthopaedic goods in specialised stores

Fuel stati ons and heati ng fuel providers Retailers involved in the sale, supply and repair of motor vehicles, motorcycles and bicycles and related faciliti es Essenti al items for health and welfare of animals Laundries and Drycleaners Banks, Post Offi ces and Credit Unions Safety items e.g. work clothes and Personal Protecti ve Equipment

Hardware stores, builders’ merchants and stores selling supplies and tools essenti al for gardening, farming and agriculture Offi ce products and services Electrical, IT and phone sales, repair and maintenance services.

Home schooling with dyslexia is not easy by Siobhán O’Neill White

Home schooling is not easy! It’s difficult trying to stay on top of all the work the children are given and it can be tough when you have more than one child. Our 12 year old also has Dyslexia, which puts adds pressure. She has trouble with reading and spelling, which makes schoolwork difficult for her. Home schooling her can be challenging, as she often gets frustrated with reading and spelling. This makes her feel upset and frustrated and is hard on all of us. We wanted to make home schooling easier for her, to reduce her stress and also, honestly, to reduce our stress too. The first thing we did was speak with her teacher to explain she was feeling overwhelmed with the amount of work and the difficulty of it. He advised that she aim to do around 70%, to ease the workload for her and to make it more manageable. Straight away, that helped.Next thing we did was introduce a scanning pen into schoolwork. Scanning pens are so brilliant, especially for children with Dyslexia. Now, when she is reading and comes across a word she does not understand, she rolls the pen over the word on the page of the book, and the pen reads the word aloud to her. It also has a dictionary function, so she can get the meaning of the word too. You can check out the pens at www.scanningpens. co.uk for a 14 day free parent trial. For sales advise and user support in Ireland, contact Brian Vickers at www.compupacit.ie He can answer your questions and help you decide if a scanning pen would be good for your child. The Dyslexia Association of Ireland are very helpful too. If you or your child is feeling overwhelmed, please don’t be afraid to speak with their teacher about it. The most important thing is that your child is healthy and well. They need exercise, play time, activities, good food and plenty of sleep. If they don’t get all the work done that’s ok. Their mental and physical health is the main priority. For more tips and support for families during this worrying time, log onto free parenting website, www.mams.ie

Lesotho Town and Regional Planning Institute Conference.

Fingal County Council were named as finalists in the RTPI Planning awards for the work in delivering quality planning and development training in Lesotho alongside Action Ireland Trust and Portmarnock Community School.This nomination in the category of “International Award for Planning Excellence” is a great recognition of the hard work, commitment and partnership with Action Ireland Trust and Portmarnock Community School in the delivery of quality planning and development in Lesotho.The Mayor of Fingal, Cllr. Eoghan O’ Brien, said: “It’s great to hear that our work with Action Ireland Trust and Portmarnock Community School in Lesotho has been recognized by being named as a finalist in the RTPI awards. Fingal County Council has undertaken a multi-focus planning initiative to support town planning in Lesotho which involves mapping, Local Area Plan production, capacity building and national planning guidance.Lesotho is now the most mapped country on the continent of Africa and the training undertaken by Fingal County Council Planners in Lesotho has been far reaching. UNICEF and other NGOs are keen to utilize these maps to plan their projects in Lesotho.A significant number of Lesotho planners are now on course to obtain a Masters in Spatial Planning from TU Dublin through the significant scholarship program that has been facilitated by Fingal County Council.Fran Whelan, CEO of Action Ireland Trust, said: “Without doubt the full extent of the Fingal County Council partnership is immeasurable in many ways particularly for the students of Portmarnock Community School who have been exposed to the importance of mapping and quality planning and development in Ireland and Lesotho.” The second Lesotho Town and Regional Planning Institute Conference, in conjunction with the Irish Planning Institute and Fingal County Council, took place this year looking at the impacts of climate change and planning. This was a historic event for planning and development in Lesotho that was attended by over 100 planners and professionals who travelled from across the country to attend the event.

Fingal County Council is inviting people to have their say as part of the annual review of bathing waters across the region.Local authorities must identify official bathing areas in their area every year so that they can be monitored for safety, water quality and their level of use. To help with this process, Fingal County Council is asking people who swim at beaches, lakes and rivers to tell them if they think they should maintain existing designated bathing waters designations or give a new official bathing area designation to areas that are commonly used for swimming, but not identified at the moment.Under European and Irish law, Irish local authorities must identify bathing waters each year so that these areas can be monitored to ensure they meet stringent microbiological water quality standards. In some cases, the official bathing areas are also the areas where local authorities focus their

Applications for the Restart Grant which will give direct grant aid to micro and small businesses to help them with the costs associated with either staying open or reopening and reemploying workers following COVID-19 closures are being accepted from today, Friday, May 22.Businesses in Fingal, which fulfill the criteria, must apply for the Restart Grant though Fingal County Council. Applications are to be submitted on-line at https://submit.link/E5RPFand details of the scheme are also available on the Fingal County Council website,www. fingal.ie/businessThe Grant will be equivalent to the rates bill of the business in 2019, with a minimum payment of €2,000 and a maximum payment of €10,000. It will be available to businesses with a turnover of less than €5m and employing 50 people or less, which were closed or impacted by at least a 25% loss in revenue from April 1, 2020 to June 30, 2020. Eligible businesses who have stayed open throughout the crisis, as well as those who are reopening under Phase 1 (from 18 May) and Phase 2 (8 June) of the Government’s Roadmap for Reopening Society and Business, are encouraged to apply now for the Restart Grant. These applications will be prioritised for payment. Other businesses are requested to wait until a few weeks before their business is due to reopen before submitting their application. To avail of the Restart Grant:A business must have a turnover of less than €5m and have 50 or less employees.The business must have suffered a projected 25%+ loss in revenue from 1st April 2020 to 30th June 2020.The business must commit to remain open or to reopen if it was closed. The business must also declare the intention to retain employees that are benefitting from the Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme (TWSS).Businesses should retain supporting documentation as spot-checks may be carried out to verify a declaration to this effect.

Applications open for Restart Grant

resources providing lifeguards during the summer season.These laws also require that the local authority prepares detailed descriptions or profiles for each of the identified bathing water sites that describe not just the bathing area but also areas in the surface waters catchment area that could be a source of pollution. The profiles include an assessment the risk of pollution and what action would be taken if pollution occurs.If you are a regular swimmer and want to help your Council decide which bathing areas should be classified as such, it might be helpful to consider the following:How your swimming area has been used up to now, How many people use the site, What facilities exist at the site and how accessible it is, Any safety issues.The public consultation is available to view at https://consult.fingal.ie/en/browse. The closing date for submissions is June 22.

Fingal CC launches a star-studded new online video series

Former Ireland Tennis player and Federations Cup Captain, Yvonne Doyle

Mayor of Fingal Cllr Eoghan O Brien

Mayor of Fingal Cllr Eoghan O’Brien kicked off the series by encouraging young people to keep active and demonstrating his own ‘keepyuppy’ football skills, in a video accessible at https://bit.ly/3bWhKFk – followed by a Twitter challenge to all Fingal Councillors.

The Mayor tweeted: “Hey @FingalSports let’s make this interesting! How many @Fingalcoco Cllrs can we get to post their sports skills

Dublin Ladies Footballer and 4 time All Ireland winner, Lyndsey Davey.

challenge? I’ll donate €10 to a local charity for every skills vid uploaded by a Cllr. A tenner forfeit for anyone who ducks out maybe?”

The Fingal Sports Stars videos to be released over the coming weeks will include information on the athlete and their road to success, their background and advice. The videos finish with a fun skills challenge for viewers to try at home.

During the Covid-19 situation Fingal County

Dublin Senior Footballer and 6 time All Ireland winner, Eric Lowndes.

Council Sports Office continue to encourage people to stay at home and stay active.It has produced a number of ‘Fingal Digifit’ home exercise and sporting skills videos along with other activity sheets to keep children occupied. These can be found on the Healthy Fingal Learning Portal at https://learning.fingal.ie/ (cannot be accessed through this site)

Lusk AC 5k Social Distancing Relay

Lusk AC members kept busy during the Covid-19 crisis. The club organised a 5k social distance relay, a kids marathon challenge as well as a family challenge. Over 120 members took part in the 5k and raised almost €4,000 for the St Vincent De Paul charity. There was more good news and we were delighted to be one of the first sports allowed to return to training in Phase 1. Some members did a brilliant job in marking out a 400m track at the club’s Rathmore Road training hub.Our pic shows Lusk AC members at the 5k Social Distancing 5k Relay.

News & Events

Conor Doyle and boys taking part in the family challenge

Veronica Brogan with Grace and Juliette

Rodrigo Lara

Nicole Hodson

Colm De Bhal & Olivier Ansaldi

Junsa Taekwondo - We can beat this!

While the restrictions continue and training together is still not allowed, Junsa’s students, along with the help of Mam’s, Dads , brothers, sisters, Nana’s and Granda’s are still training and keeping their skills and fitness up to date.With the restrictions beginning to relax hopefully sometime soon we will be allowed back to training in some capacity.Junsa would like to thank all their students and supporters for their continued support and hope everyone is keeping well.We will see you very soon. In the meantime here are pictures of some of our students training at home.

Amelia poomsae training

Evie practicing her poomsae in the garden. Poomsae is a specific set of move that the students preform at gradings and at tournaments. There are different poomsae’s for the different grades / belt colour.

Cameron’s high side kick. Brilliant. Tosia’s amazing leg control.

Charlie and his Dad.

This is easy… we are offering you the chance to win €50. All you have to do is correctly fill in the crossword and discover the name of an area in Fingal spelt out in the coloured squares. Then send the completed crossword and your answer by email, with your name, address and telephone number to communitylocals@ gmail.com before 5pm on June 16. The first correct entry to be drawnwill win €50..Good luck

Across Down

1. Paintings on walls. (6) 5. Division of a diocese. (6) 10. The real material. (7) 11. Likely to perform unpredictably. (7) 12. Skewer for meat and a disgusting habit. (4) 13. The first fruit. (5) 15. Case from which playing cards are dealt one at a time. (4) 17. A long period of time. (3) 19. Old man is a nut! (6) 21. Put to death. (6) 22. Protective glasses set in a flexible frame. (7) 23. Porter gives a short account of the news. (6) 25. Could be belly, pages or fever. (6) 28. Lightly strike the faucet. (3) 30. A fit of often silent anger or bad temper. (4) 31. Melon is another fruit. (5) 32. A confused murmur or flurry of activity. (4) 35. Make troops hard or harder. (7) 36. Tears up the inventor of partial sterilisation of a substance. (7) 37. Valuable stones. (6) 38. An assistant with power to act when a superior is absent. (6) 2. Radioactive element. (7) 3. A dull and persistent pain. (4) 4. Gather money together with difficulty. (6) 5. Spanish dish. (6) 6. Of meat only cooked a short time. (4) 7. Bag for school books. (7) 8. Sarah Palin was Governor here. (6) 9. A smooth final surface of a substance, such as concrete, applied to a floor. (6) 14. You run it on a computer. (7) 16. Severely inflamed and painful. (5) 18. Sires for salary increases. (5) 20. A small spot, a speck. (3) 21. Opener. (3) 23. Far away, secluded. (6) 24. Fresh fruit and vegetables grown for the market. (7) 26. Tousled is the noisiest. (7) 27. A male magician or sorcerer. (6) 28. A game involving love. (6) 29. Slangily exhausted. (6) 33. Fit a horse with an outer foot covering. (4) 34. An invitation to reply. (4)

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