April may 2017 newsfour press2 ilovepdf compressed (1)

APRIL / MAY 2017

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April / May 2017

Web: www.newsfour.ie = Email: newsfour@gmail.com = Local newsdesk phone: 01 667 3317 Serving Sandymount, Irishtown, Ringsend, Pearse Street, Docklands, Ballsbridge & Donnybrook

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WHAT LIES BEHIND THESE WALLS?

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Jennifer Reddin he discovery of a mass grave containing the remains of a significant number of babies and young children at the site of a former Bon Secours mother and baby home in Tuam has once again cast a spotlight on the fate of the many women and children unaccounted for from similar institutions.

One such establishment is the former Magdalene Laundry in Donnybrook, located a short distance from the town’s Main Street.

In August last year, a company called Montlake lodged a planning application for the development of 25 luxury apartments on the site.

Prior to the application being lodged, the site was inspected by the City Archaeologist, Dr Ruth n

Page 8: Upcoming Events

Johnson, together with the applicant’s archaeological consultants, with a view to establishing the scope of an archaeological, social and industrial heritage investigation of the site.

An archaeological assessment report, which took the summary findings of the IDC (MacAleese) report and the Justice for Magdalenes Research Group report (2015) into account, was prepared and submitted with the application. The IDC report notes 167 burials associated with the laundry between 1922 and 1992.

The JFMR report notes 312 between 1835 and 2014. The assessment report recommended an archaeological examination of the site and a nearby burial ground “post-demolition”.

Speaking at a Flowers For

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Ringsend Community Services Forum (RCSF) will run an easter camp as usual, Mon 10th April to Fri 14th April, 2pm to 4:30pm daily. Free of charge. Contact: (01) 237 5401 or Sueann on 085 1393571.

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Clanna Gael 2017 Easter Camp for 4 to 12 year old boys and girls: 10am to 2.30pm Mon-Thurs; 10am to 2.00pm on Friday. Email: claireryan.gpo@gmail.com or call Claire on 086 87664426.

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Open day for children in St Patricks Rowing Club, Ringsend. Interested parents and children can find out more on their Facebook page:.facebook.com/stpatricksrowingclub

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Athletic Association of Ireland 10km night run.

Runners due to pass through Irishtown/ Strand St/ Pembroke St Junction @ 21.15 on Sunday 23rd April.

Info: www.virginmedia.ie/nightrun

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Dodder Action Day with Dodder Action Group - 11 am.

Fifth all-river clean from Tallaght to Donnybrook. We have the gear, we just need bodies! Recycling aiming to build a MOUNTAIN of recyclables to make a serious case for refunds on bottles and cans.

Contact: dodderaction@gmail.com

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As part of An Taisce’s National Spring Clean 2017 campaign, St Matthew’s, Irishtown, will be hosting a clean-up morning between 10am and 1pm. Contact: nickystronge@gmail.com or text/phone 087 6887049.

RICC Easter Camp. 5 - 13 year olds.

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Ringsend Dog Show 2017 at Ringsend Park

convent, where both nuns and residents were buried. The sisters say that they can account for the whereabouts of all those who died while working and living in the laundry grounds, pointing out that the death and burial records were checked by the McAleese Commission.

Although Martin McAleese’s investigation into the Magdalene Laundries and his subsequent report support this claim, the

IN THIS ISSUE…

Page 14: Google and Facebook in the community

Spring Events

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Magdalenes commemoration, which took place at Glasnevin Cemetery on March 5th, survivor Mary Merritt called for a full examination of the sites of the Magdalene laundries in both Donnybrook and Seán MacDermott Street, saying that they should not be redeveloped before a search for children’s graves is carried out.

The Religious Sisters of Charity have a private cemetery in the grounds of the Donnybrook

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McAleese Report itself has been criticised by The UN Committee Against Torture (UNCAT) who said that it “did not conduct a fully independent investigation into allegations of arbitrary detention, forced labour or ill-treatment,” and that it “lacked many elements of a prompt, independent and thorough investigation as recommended by the committee.”

Continued on page 15.

Photo by Kevin O’Gorman.

Page 37: Protests at Shelbourne Park

PAGE 2 NewsFour Newspaper is part of a DSP Community Employment Programme.

Remember this?

elcome to the Spring issue of NewsFour. I have to give great credit to all the journalists and contributors to the paper this issue. There is a range of in-depth stories on great people in the community, in addition to covering issues of profound importance. Most notably, the full truth of what happened inside the walls of the Magdalene Laundry in Donnybrook in it’s time of operation has not been fully and extensively unveiled, and we bring you an overview of the background and the challenges around this.

I also bring you the news that our Managing Editor, Gemma Byrne, will be departing shortly. She has been a great leader of the organisation here in NewsFour and I know I speak for everybody here when I convey our affection for her. Gemma has always helped everyone as much as she can and always manages to have a kind and supportive presence around the office.

Her smile and company around NewsFour will be sadly missed.

Gemma is moving on to a new accountancy role and we wish her the very best of luck in her new career.

Editor Fergus Hayden Web Editor Kevin Carney Journalists Jennifer Reddin Harry Bradley Paul Carton Paul O’Rourke Kevin Mac Sharry Jessica Ellis

Contributors Gavan Bergin Felix O’Regan David Carroll Jaclyn Doyle Crossword Gemma Byrne Design and Layout Eugene Carolan Ad Designer Stephen Whelan

Sandymount Community Services, 13A Fitzwilliam Street, Ringsend, Dublin 4.

Telephone: (01)6673317 E-mail: newsfour@gmail.com Website: www.newsfour.ie Opinions expressed in NewsFour do not necessarily represent the views of Sandymount Community Services.

Printed by Datascope Ltd, Wexford

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The Editor’s Corner

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NewsFour

Photographer Kevin O’Gorman

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Above is a classic local image, taken many years ago, from the good old days of smoke-emitting coal fires and gasometers.

Letterbox

Dear Editor I would like to say how much I enjoy NewsFour paper. My sister keeps it for me as I now live in Swords. I can’t believe the name they are going to call the new bridge ‘the Gut’. Could they not call it the ‘Purcell’ after the great Noel! Wonder what your readers think? Hope I get to read the paper when I get to Australia!

Maria Kelly, 13th Feb Editor’s note: In our last issue we updated on the latest news about the proposed new Dodder bridge between Britain Quay and York Rd. It has been referred to as ‘the Gut’ in planning documents but this would be a preliminary name until it gets appropriate name when actually built.

Mr Tilly – Mr Fantastic

Readers and locals may remember Mr Tilly’s Christmas lights fundraising showcase that he puts on every year. Well he has raised another €15,663 in aid of Our Lady’s Hospice & Care Services, Harold Cross with his 2016 Christmas lights display.

Over the past seven years he has raised a total of €91,000 for them!

What a guy.

Fergus Hayden Editor

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APRIL / MAY 2017

Jessica Ellis igital Schools of Distinction is a flagship programme supported by HP Ireland, Microsoft Ireland and the Dublin West Education Centre. It has been developed to assess progress and recognise excellence in the use of technology at primary level, while providing practical support and encouragement.

Participating schools will help ensure their schools are getting access to the digital classroom from an early age so they can have the skills and experience to succeed in a digital future. Schools that successfully complete the threestep programme will receive a nationally-recognised Digital School of Distinction Award, accredited by the Department of Education.

Over the past two years, it has been the aim of Star of the Sea Boys National School, Sandymount to achieve this level of distinction. The school was inspected by a representative of the programme and are now delighted to announce that they been accredited the Digital Schools of Distinction award.

The January school circular, in recognition of the award, said: “We would like to thank n

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Digital distinction for Star of the Sea

all our students and teachers involved in achieving this award for all their hard work.

Well done.”

Dave O’Mahony, teacher of 5th and 6th class, explains the initiatives that were undertaken in the school. “Digital Schools is an award given out for promoting the use of information and communication technologies in education.

Principal Kevin Munnelly and the principal before him, Una Condon, started the ball rolling with the support of the

board of management and the parents’ association.

“In the last two years, it has really taken off, previously we only had laptops upstairs.

Now, we have wi-fi throughout the school, we have a school server, we have an internal email system and 16 new laptops. Everything has been digitalised, we have interactive projectors in all of the classrooms, which means the children can come up and try different things on the board, we feel this promotes

curiosity in learning. We do computer programming also, through a program called Scratch, which was developed

by Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is used worldwide. It uses drag and drop functions and introduces the children to coding and the processes behind it.

“The funding comes from the Department of Education and the parents’ association, but as always with IT it is not a once-off investment. There is a constant stream of fund-

ing coming in to keep it up to date. The parents’ association are great, they organise lots of fundraising, especially in the school hall at night. They are responsible for installing wi-fi throughout the school, which is great because now it is completely wireless.

“Also, one of the parents with experience in IT is helping us with our router to make sure that we have the maximum amount of speed for broadband. He has helped ensure that 30 or 40 computers can go online at once and nothing is being slowed down.

“We got the award because we’ve been implementing all these policies right across all classrooms. From first and second class upwards, children are interacting with technology every day and junior and senior infants benefit because the teacher has the technology and they are introduced to its use through the projectors and the interactive white boards.”

Pictured on left is Principal Kevin Munnelly and on right is Dave O’Mahony, with 5th and 6th class of Star of the Sea B.N.S., proud to receive the Digital Schools of Distinction Award.

Photo Courtesy of St Mary’s Star of the Sea.

Ballroom dancing, tea and love hearts

Kevin Mac Sharry n Valentine’s Day last, a romantically-themed Tea Dance was held in Clanna Gael Fontoy GAA club.

It was a charming affair with many older couples and groups turning up to take in the ballroom atmosphere. Cary Posavitz and the Players played wonderful old-time music, songs such as, ‘The Lady Is A Tramp’ and ‘Route 66’.

The locals from Ringsend, Sandymount and Pearse Street, many of whom had clearly danced before, were initially shy and nervous, but with much encouragement from an increasingly enthusiastic choreographer, Muirne Bloom, were soon on the floor learning the cha-cha-cha.

As the participants showed their moves, they were met with fast music where things got lively.

Spending some time with the organisers. I learned about the group Alight, a part of Dublin Culture Connects: National

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Neighbourhood, which is open to residents from Irishtown, Ringsend, Sandymount and Pearse Street.

They organised this night

in conjunction with Coiscéim dance theatre. Their aim on the night was partially to encourage older members of the associated communities to come together,

although the event was open to everyone. Coiscéim train nonprofessional dancers to a high standard. According to Philippa Donnellan, “it keeps them fit, and improves their well-being,” while also getting them creative and teaching them about the art form.

Many took it upon themselves to dress somewhat extravagantly in red and in one particular case wore hearts on their front and backs, conveying “you ain’t seen nothing yet,” regarding their bold dance moves. The atmosphere was smooth and silky, bouncing to the rhythm of the dancers and bursting into frequent shouts and cheers.

Alight seek to bring different communities together aiming “to inspire and connect communities in a lasting

and meaningful way,” through guidance and mentoring by professional artists. To that degree it was a success on the night as the general mood was one of cheer, goodwill and mirth as well as a genuine enthusiasm for the dance.

Pictured left: The Green Oak Choir Below: Chris Reads and Jimmy Reddington.

Photos by Kevin O’Gorman.

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Heritage Hero award for Alan

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Harry Bradley founder member of the Dublin Dockworkers Preservation Society, Alan Martin, has been named as a runner-up in a major national heritage award. Martin received the honour out of a group of 86 individual nominees at the Heritage Council’s Heritage Hero Awards in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the protection and n

promotion of heritage in Ireland.

Minister for Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, Heather Humphreys TD, announced the awards at a special ceremony at The Royal College of Surgeons, Kildare Street, on February 22nd.

Presenting the awards, Minister Humphreys said: “I would like to congratulate each of the heritage projects receiving awards today.

The individuals, professionals and community groups, many of whom are volunteers, who work tirelessly to protect and preserve our heritage, are the backbone of the heritage sector.”

The Heritage Council is the statutory body charged with identifying, protecting, preserving and enhancing Ireland’s national heritage. National heritage includes heritage objects, seascapes, wrecks and inland waterways, so it was no surprise that Alan Martin’s contribution to collecting and preserving images of local docklands heritage attracted the attention of the awards panel.

Martin has always had a passion for preserving the industrial heritage of Dublin Docks. Initially, he did this through his own photographs. Then he helped set up the Dublin Dockworkers Preservation Society, which appealed to locals for old

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photographs of the area. Martin maintains a website which displays the 3,500+ photographs that have been donated to date. Without him, much of the docklands’ rich visual heritage may have been lost.

Martin, originally a dock worker from Portland Row, said that he considered the recognition from the Heritage Council as “a great boost for the Dublin Dockworkers Society who have put in a lot of work to preserve the history of the whole Dublin docks

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area including the factories, timber yards, ships, and the dockers themselves.”

He went on to pay special tribute to his colleague in the Dublin Dockworkers Society, Jimmy Carthy, who was present at the award ceremony but who has sadly since passed away.

Readers can register online to view Alan Martin’s work on the Dublin Dockers photo collection at www.bluemelon.com/alanmartin

Far left, left to right: Acting chair of the Heritage Council Michael Parsons with Minister Heather Humphreys and Alan Martin of the Dublin Dockworkers Preservation Society, Heritage Hero Award runner-up.

Left: Jimmy Carthy (RIP), Alan Martin and Audrey MacCready of the Dublin Dockworkers Preservation Society at the Heritage Awards.

Game on again at Lansdowne

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Kevin Mac Sharry ansdowne Lawn Tennis Club was officially reopened on March 4th. It has been refurbished to the tune of €1.2 million and it is the club’s sixth refurbishment.

The club dates back to 1875, when it was founded

by Henry Dunlop. However, it has only been the Lansdowne Lawn Tennis Club since 1880. As the club’s website makes clear: “Lansdowne players were instrumental in the Irish invasion of Wimbledon in the 1890’s.” Joshua Pim won the singles in 1893 and 1894. In addition, to this, he and Frank Stoker (Bram Stoker’s cousin) won the doubles in 1890 and 1893.

Although this dominance from Lansdowne, and indeed from Ireland, came to an end at the beginning of the 20th century, its proud tradition was not lost on its current members, one of whom, Mark Boland, extolled the club’s golden era in world tennis.

The club still holds itself to a high standard. The president of the club, Suzanne Tyrell, spoke of the “strong ladies’ team,” one of whom, Aoife O’Neill, hopes to play for the Irish Fed Cup Team (an international tournament for the women’s Tennis equivalent n

to the Davis Cup).

Similarly high standards existed in the men’s tennis, resulting in topping the Dublin League five times in the 1970s and 80s.

Recently, the Lansdowne men’s over 45s team has won the East of Ireland tournament in the over-35s category the last five years in a row.

One notable player, Tommy Burke, who represented Ireland in the King’s Cup and Veterans’ club was “the golden boy of Lansdowne Tennis Club,” according to Neil Wilson, a veteran player. He was unbeatable, but unfortunately he died young. Pat Guiry, another veteran player,

stated that “he was someone who left us all too young.”

Pressed about the reasons for the club’s success, Neil Wilson noted the location of Lansdowne, as well as the fact that this is a young person’s club as significant factors. In addition, a large number of international amateur players join the club when they arrive in Ireland.

The club itself organises many events for the local community such as the Captain’s Ball, which usually has around 200 people in attendance. They also hold many social tournaments and leagues for older players – the club have members playing into their late seventies.

The opening ceremony was very well attended by a buoyant, jubilant crowd. The friendly banter made it clear that the members were a tight-knit group and excited for its future.

Left to right: Mark Boland, VicePresident of Lansdowne LTC; Bernadette Caulfield, Chair of Organising Committee; George Stevenson, President of Tennis Ireland; Suzanne Tyrell, President of Lansdowne LTC; and Bernard McCormack, member of Organising Committee.

Photo by Kevin O’Gorman.

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ARTS AND CULTURE

When Dante came to Beggar’s Bush

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Harry Bradley he National Print Museum at Beggar’s Bush Barracks recently hosted an exhibition of creative print materials based upon Dante Alighieri’s epic 14th century narrative poem The Divine Comedy.

The Typographic Dante is the result of an ongoing project by graphic designer Barrie Tullett and consists of texts from Dante’s masterpiece with accompanying typographical designs inspired by the text’s narrative.

All the exhibits were created by employing obsolete printing technologies, which include wood and metal letterpress printing and mechanical typewriters and Letraset, so as to evoke various scenes and atmospheres from the poem’s narrative.

Dante’s Divine Comedy is widely considered to be one of the semn

inal works of western literature.

The poem traces the Florentine poet’s imaginative journey from Hell through Purgatory and Paradise and is considered among Christian theologists to be a masterful allegorical description of the soul’s journey towards God.

The text has inspired generations of writers, including Chaucer, Milton and Tennyson. British Romantic Era poet and visual artist William Blake’s illustrations of scenes from the poem helped introduce Dante as a major literary figure to the English-speaking world.

Irish writers inspired by Dante’s epic include James Joyce, Samuel Beckett and Seamus Heaney, and internationally renowned Belfast poet Ciaran Carson has created his own critically acclaimed translated version of the poem’s first section The Inferno.

CEO of the National Print Museum, Carla Marrinan, explained to NewsFour how the Dante exhibition fitted in with the museum’s mission to collect, document, preserve, exhibit, interpret and make accessible the material evidence of the printing craft while foster-

ing associated skills of the craft in Ireland.

“Barrie Tullett works with obsolete technologies and at the National Print Museum we know a thing or two about obsolescence,” she added. “The exhibition comprises of two sections, Inferno and Purgatory. Inferno is produced by letterpress, which is the type of printing that the Museum concentrates on.

Barrie Tullett explores the typewriter as a printing press and produced Purgatory through the medium of typewriter art. This really interested us and we have had the opportunity to dust off the Museum’s typewriter collection and put it on display again! The exhibition appealed to audiences of Dante and Italian literature, typography and design and printing.”

PAGE 5 Barrie Tullett plans to finish the third book of the Divine Comedy for the project, and Marrinan told NewsFour that she looks forward to the exhibition touring in future as a complete set representing Dante’s epic poem in its entirety.

The National Print Museum opens 9am to 5pm on weekdays and 2pm to 5pm on Saturdays and provides tours of exhibits for visitors. The museum offers a free guided tour of their permanent collection every Sunday at 3pm, and no booking is required for this event. Information on exhibitions and upcoming events can be found on the museum website at: https:// www.nationalprintmuseum.ie.

Images courtesy of the National Print Museum.

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Halfway hooley at Berth 18

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Jessica Ellis he 12th annual Aware Harbour2Harbour Walk took place on St. Patrick’s Day recently, a great activity for those who wanted to avoid the crush of the parade.

The walk kicked off at 10.30am and participants took the 26-kilometre route starting in Howth Harbour and walking to Dun Laoghaire Harbour or starting at Dun Laoghaire Harbour and walking to Howth.

Dublin Port Company sponsored the event for the third year running and hosted the Harbour2Harbour n

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chocolate to boost everybody’s energy.

Dublin Port stated on their Facebook page: “Well done to everyone who took part in #harbour2harbour17 today. It was a fantastic day and great to see so many faces at the Halfway Hooley at Berth 18! Your support will go a long way to helping raise awareness and vital funds for Aware’s services.”

Participants raised sponsorship from friends and family and the wider community, with all funds raised going to Aware’s extensive support network for those living with depression.

From left: Participants ready to begin.

This pair get in theme for their walk.

Walkers at the halfway point getting much-needed refreshments.

Photos courtesy of Aware.

Halfway Hooley at Berth 18, close to the Thomas Clarke toll bridge. They provided toilets, music and fun at the halfway point and a bevy of volunteers were on hand with much-needed tea and coffee on the wet and windy day.

98FM were the official radio partners for the walk and were also at the halfway point to bolster spirits with a spot of face painting. Glenisk was giving away free yogurt and there was also King crisps and Cadbury

Jeanie Johnston back on the water

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Jennifer Reddin he replica ‘famine ship,’ Jeanie Johnston, returned to her berth on the River Liffey at Customs House Quay in February, following a spell in Dublin Port’s last graving dock, where she underwent muchneeded refurbishment.

The Jeanie Johnston is an authentic replica of a 19th Century three-masted barque which was n

built in Quebec, Canada, in 1847.

Originally designed as a cargo ship, the vessel was adapted to carry passengers when demand for transport to North America and Canada increased as a result of the Potato Famine in Ireland.

From 1848 to 1855 the Jeanie Johnston carried as many as 2,500 impoverished Irish emigrants to new lives in America and Canada.

Conditions on-board were basic and cramped, with each journey taking about seven weeks.

However, it is recorded that during her years of service as an emigrant ship, all the passengers made the arduous transatlantic crossing safely, with no lives lost.

This is credited to the care given to the passengers by the ship’s captain, Castletownshend-born James Attridge and the ship’s doctor, Dr Richard Blennerhassett.

The return of the Jeanie Johnston to her berth marks the end of an era. She will enter the history books as the last vessel to

be serviced in Dublin Port’s last working dry dock. A sad occasion for many Dubliners, the graving dock, which has served the city for over 60 years, is scheduled to be filled in and decommissioned as part of the €230 million Alexandra Basin project.

Micheál Ó Cionna, who manages the Jeanie Johnston as a tourist attraction and museum, told NewsFour that he is “delighted to have the ship back and open for business all year round.”

The Jeanie Johnston is open daily for visitors from 9.30am to 5pm.

Left: Jeanie Johnston in repair at the last graving dock in Dublin Port. Photo by John McNally.

Top: Back at berth on the River Liffey.

Photo by Kevin O’Gorman.

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APRIL / MAY 2017

Kevin Mac Sharry he Beggar’s Bush D4 Business Group, a collective of twenty local businesses, has been nominated for the Local Authority Members Awards (LAMA) for the second year in a row. The awards highlight and recognise community and councils working together, bringing national recognition to projects and developments that may otherwise go unrecognised. The award includes 20 categories for work implemented through unique projects that enhance their local area for the good of the community.

Kathryn Byrne of Limelight Communications, emphasised how they had “punched above their weight,” despite being a comparatively small community. One of the members of the group, Emma Farrell of EF Creative Studios, a hair and makeup agency, won the Makeup Studio of the Year, Dublin award and was the overall winner of Makeup Studio of the Year Ireland Award in the recent Irish Wedding Awards.

This impressive accolade further added to the group’s commitment to quality in the business world.

Her achievement paid dividends to the standard of the group in the business world, as well as their n

BUSINESS

Business boom in Beggar’s Bush

wonderful community efforts.

In the shadow of the Aviva Stadium, Beggar’s Bush has become a buzzing hub of activity, with fine restaurants and pubs and an active community spirit in recent times.

The group represents vibrant business people who took it upon themselves to get involved in the area and create a ‘go-to’ place.

Slattery’s pub is one of the more recognisable businesses and has been there since 1989. Asked about its beginnings, Irial Slattery of Slattery’s stated: “We all started individually moving into the area. The

Food Game moved in next door and a buzz was generated.” The community spirit evolved very naturally as they came into contact. Many of the members were new to the area and did not know each other but had a desire to reach out. “We thought we’d pool our resources so we could do more for the area.”

Ross Staunton of Foodgame said that it was “a new neighbourhood with young people moving in. People are coming down from Ballsbridge.” The members of the group agreed that it was “driven by food and drink,” and was about

“bringing groups to the area.”

Slattery stated that in order to emphasise the area and put it in people’s head that they “made a point” of including ‘Beggar’s Bush’ in the business group name rather than ‘Sandymount’ or other relevant references. He spoke of the recent changes in neighbouring areas such as Google opening offices at Barrow Street and the re-opening of the Aviva stadium in Lansdowne Road, both of which channelled a great many people to the area to eat and drink. Now, the area is retaining people who are “hanging out”

PAGE 7 and using the amenities.

Barry McNerney of Paulie’s Pizza/Juniors, Lotts & Co and The Old Spot referred to their community spirit, stating that initially they didn’t know anybody. It was somewhere you passed through getting to Sandymount or Baggot Street.

However, through their efforts they endeavoured to give the area an identity and to make it work as a collective. Like “a little village,” as Andrew Faulkner of Alasta Motors added.

Events that have been organised though the group are karaoke nights, a casino night and the Harvest Food Festival held annually in Beggar’s Bush, to which the restaurants contribute food and drink.

The group communicates with the community via Facebook at facebook.com/beggarsbushd4/, via Twitter at @BeggarsBushD4 and through their website at beggarsbushd4.com.

Pictured, from left: Andrew Faulkner of Alasta Motors; Barry McNerney of Juniors; Irial Slattery of Slattery’s pub; Emma Farrell of EF Creative Studios; Kathryn Byrne of Limelight Communications; Ross Staunton of Foodgame.

Image Courtesy of Roisin Furlong, Limelight Communications.

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SPRING EVENTS

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FILM

Spellman Centre gets creative

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Paul O’Rourke he Spellman Centre in Ringsend, best known for their work in response to drug abuse and other related issues, are adding a new string to their bow in the fight against addiction. They’ve just commissioned a short film called, ‘The Tunnel’, which was written by

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and stars the centre’s own service users. As it turns out, the entire experience has been such a positive one for all involved that the Spellman Centre now hope to add film and drama as an additional therapy offering for clients moving forward.

The film tells five harrowing real-life stories from the point

of view of one individual who, while out walking one day, enters a tunnel and comes across various items on the ground which remind him of his friends. We then see each friend’s individual struggle with homelessness, attempted suicide, domestic violence, transgender discrimination and drug abuse.

PAGE 9 The man then exits the tunnel and finds himself at the Spellman Centre where he meets his friends, who have all survived their distressing journeys. Although the accounts depicted are real, the actors don’t play out their own stories for obvious reasons, but it was the exercise of assuming someone else’s role, and standing in their shoes, where some real insight was achieved.

The project, which was directed by Pat Larkin, the drummer with The Blades, originally had a run time of 15 minutes but an additional 12 minutes were later added showing service users telling their own stories. “This is much more than a film,” said Larkin. “I live up the road and I was shocked to hear stories of what others in my neighbourhood were going through”.

Manager of the centre, Teresa Weafer, said the film is “our way of highlighting hidden harm and an opportunity to send a clear message out that recovery can happen with the right resources.” The film also features a Damien Dempsey song called Serious, that he kindly gave permission to use.

The Spellman Centre, according to Weafer, is seeing an increase in young people presenting with a range of different issues.

She hopes that ‘The Tunnel’ will be shown in schools and prisons as a way of raising awareness of what’s happening in our communities.

In addition, the centre runs a drug awareness campaign from April to June each year, culminating in a graduation ceremony where service users declare themselves drug free. It is hoped that the film will play an important part of that initiative, and will prove the catalyst for future creative endeavours in the future.

Left: The cast of Spellman Centre’s, ‘The Tunnel’.

Below: Filming in action for Spellman Centre’s, ‘The Tunnel’.

Photos by Fr. Tonge.

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IN PROFILE

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Young local Muslims share their views

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Jessica Ellis n light of the contentious issues surrounding Trump’s foreign policies, NewsFour approached local Muslims to garner their opinions about the attempted ban on immigration and refugees into the United States. n

We also asked what it is like being Muslim in Ireland and whether they are worried for their rights and dignities here.

Images supplied by Jessica Ellis.

Salma Ramadan, 19. Egyptian background.

“Well, for me personally I didn’t feel it was a huge difference to me because Ireland is on its own, America is on its own, Trump doesn’t run Ireland and I feel people are really open-minded in Ireland, especially in college. I think we have the most open-minded people here, they’re very accepting and very tolerant. My family don’t have ties to America, they are all living safe in Egypt so I’m not worried about them.”

Rida Mahmood, 20. Pakistani heritage.

“I moved here when I was three in 1999. Both of my parents are from Pakistan. His travel ban was on other Muslim countries not Pakistan and all my relatives are mostly from Pakistan. But I do know that he has had a huge impact. My cousin who has two young daughters left to visit Pakistan and even though he was able to come back it made us imagine what would it be like if he couldn’t come back and that is what has happened to so many people, so we can sympathise with them.

“The fact that people can support such a concept, the travel restrictions, it’s unbelievable to imagine something like that. I attended the protest at the embassy and it was really nice to see everyone. Even though the ban is dividing people, its actually having a bigger effect at uniting the world together. There are so many people out there willing to help and willing to diversify society and they are happy about getting to know new cultures and people. It’s nice to see that.”

Andre Reza Tabassi, 25 is an American passport holder studying for a Masters in Ireland for a year.

“It’s a little better to be Muslim in Ireland than in America. Whatever that has made Irish culture the way it is now, people are a lot more friendly.

In the U.S. I can see the discrimination against Muslims sometimes, it doesn’t happen that much but on a few occasions you could feel the hate.

But here you can feel the curiosity, people are more open to it. They are opinionated but still respectful and I enjoy living here, it’s not a big deal at all.

“Americans are very realistic, they want to grab the enemy before the enemy attacks. That has been the mentality of America’s foreign policy for many years. So with Trump being in office, it’s not any different from the past, including with Obama. It is an inconvenience, the travel restrictions, but I think maybe it’s an essential part to go through until the stigma of Muslims being associated with terrorism is removed. Maybe after a year or two of the screenings being implemented they will realise that they aren’t getting anywhere with it and that they are not stopping any real terrorists and that it’s not effective. Other than that, going back to the states is going to be fairly fine. Trump has made the issue come to the forefront, but people burning mosques and the Quran or people looking for Muslims to beat up doesn’t happen very often. You don’t feel the fear they try to show you in the media.”

Mohammed Elfaki, 19, born in Saudi Arabia and his parents are from Sudan.

“Personally things haven’t really changed in Ireland. The Irish people are very nice and accepting and very friendly. It is the stereotype but that is what their reputation is like around Europe. In all my years living here it has held true.

“For us as young Muslims, most of us are second or third generation.

So our older generations have established any facilities that we need, like the mosques. And the Muslim population in Ireland right now is at a stage that any necessities, like halal foods are readily available because there is enough of a population to generate a demand for it.

“For me as a guy, I think girls have it a bit harder because they have to wear their head scarves so they are a lot more visible, but personally I have never had anyone say anything bad to me or be abusive. My mother has been called stuff but it has generally been by men who are either intoxicated or under the influence of something.

“I do have a Sudanese passport so I was affected by the ban since I was a dual citizen. I don’t really travel much but it could have been a problem.

Let’s say, last year when my dad had a conference to attend in Boston, then that would have been a problem for him because he wouldn’t have been able to go and he needed to attend it to get some credits for education. But I am glad that the world at large sees how much an insane move it is and the judges have acted to block it, so that’s good. That is what most people are saying, despite what Trump is trying to represent.”

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APRIL / MAY 2017

Jessica Ellis p to 1,000 people gathered outside the United States Embassy in Ballsbridge, on February 2nd, to protest about President Trump’s executive order of a 90-day ban on people from seven Muslim countries entering the U.S. The order created confusion on a global scale, with detained migrants stranded at airports and refugees being refused entry at immigration pre-clearance facilities. Dublin and Shannon airports enacted the ban. There has been an outcry against the order in many countries, Ireland included, in forms of marches and protests at embassies and airport terminals.

There was a fairly strong gardai presence at the protest to ensure that traffic interruptions were kept to a minimum, but they did not intervene beyond that. The protest was a peaceful display of Dublin residents’ distaste for the foreign policies of the new Trump administration.

Organisations such as Impact, Social Democrats and People n

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Large turnout at anti-Trump protest

Before Profit also attended.

Kevin Donohue, Chair of Labour Youth stated: “We have seen over the last couple of days just how far he is willing to go. He is talking about introducing religious freedoms and while doing so restricting human rights and human dignities. This is a very

difficult time for the world and we have to stand united against these types of policies. We have to work against them because if we don’t we’ll find ourselves in a position where, very soon, everyone is under threat and everyone is under attack.”

Another aim of the protest

was to convince Taoiseach Enda Kenny not to present the annual bowl of shamrock to the President in order to question Trump’s decision making. The group who hosted the protest in Ballsbridge is United against Racism, which was founded in 2015 and is a membership-

PAGE 11 based, grass-root, democratic organisation.

Memet Uludag, a spokesperson for the group, released this statement to NewsFour: “We stand in solidarity with the Muslims, migrants and refugees in the US. We also stand in solidarity with the millions in the U.S. who were out last week and this week at the airports rejecting Trump’s racist travel ban. We also call on Enda Kenny not to travel to the White House to present a bowl of shamrock to Trump. We say, ‘Not In Our Name.’”

Since the protest, Trump’s travel ban has been suspended by a trio of federal judges who ruled against it in court on the grounds of it being unconstitutional. Trump has vowed to submit a revised plan, but current drafts of the replacement travel ban continue to single out the same seven Muslim majority countries; Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia,Yemen and Iraq.

Photo by Kevin O’Gorman.

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Kevin Mac Sharry he junction linking Strand Road to Merrion Road and crossing the Dart line in Sandymount is a nuisance at best and a hazard at worst. Widely known as Merrion Gates, it has been associated with a number of incidents and accidents, with one occurring the last week of February.

A number of proposals have been made over the years to try and alleviate the traffic and congestion as well as the issue with crashing into the gates, which leads to Dart delays at times of heavy traffic.

The current proposal comes out of the Sandymount/Merrion to Blackrock Corridor Study. It proposes diverting traffic from the Strand Road away from the Dart lines through a new junction, which may come down from the Strand Road before this junction. In the view of the NTA, this would alleviate both the acute angle for cyclists as well as avoiding the Dart lines.

NewsFour explained the proposal of the Corridor study in a previous issue. In response to this, we received and interviewed two proposals – one from Bryan O’Flynn and one from Dr. Brian Hughes, who sent in a submission which criticised the proposal and suggested some possible improvements.

Comparing the proposal at Merrion Gates to a similar completed project in the Netherlands, O’Flynn questioned the cost, which he understood to be n

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Merrion Gates:

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Alternative plan suggested for new junction

€48 million. The Netherlands project cost €14.2 million and involved a cycle and car tunnel under the train line to alleviate a congestion issue there. He felt that it would not be “value for money”.

O’Flynn understands that the road alteration will proceed from Strand Road possibly through land owned by local businesses or residential areas but ending up going through the parking spaces of Our Lady of Peace church. This would cause issues for churchgoers, many of whom are elderly.

In addition, the use of Merrion Road at this particular point would mean that an already busy

business area would become heavily congested. Considering the area contains St. Vincent’s Hospital, which will also house the National Maternity Hospital, in addition to a number of local businesses.

O’Flynn also stated that it will have an impact on parking for local residents and businesses.

He felt that an improved cycle path along the coast was not a strong enough justification and that the Natura 2000 issue impeding access to the bay at the strand was “ridiculous.”

Similarly, Dr Hughes stated: “The NTA needs to accept that people and the human habitat will always take precedence

over birds or flora within the concept of proportionality so as to reverse the untenable and unreasonable 2013, EU-foisted 100% ‘freezing’ of Natura [2000] land-areas.”

Therefore, moving into the bay area rather than impacting on people’s houses would prove more productive in terms of road usage. When asked how the congestion issue would be resolved he made reference to the Eastern Bypass, which if underground and overground would be able to alleviate some of the traffic difficulties. As regards the cycling traffic, he felt that, though unpopular, taking away some of the trees along the

APRIL / MAY 2017

road may alleviate this issue.

Dr. Hughes, who analysed the proposal in light of broader government planning, as well as in relation to the area surrounding Merrion Gates, felt that the proposal is “disappointingly conservative and unambitious.”

He feels that “the journey times between Dun Laoghaire and the city centre are unacceptably long.” This is because of “inadequate transport infrastructure,” given the increased growth and wealth in the area.

He stated that the NTA has perceived obstacles and “appears to be fixated on existing EU SAC judgments, to EU Natura designation, legal and environmental strictures: ones that are not considered by this writer to present impenetrable, unresolvable, or long-term obstacles”.

Dr. Hughes felt that continuing the Strand Road parallel to the railway, “ramping up and crossing the railway immediately north of Booterstown Bird Sanctuary,” then going down the “stream culvert” would link “seamlessly as a slip road onto the Rock Road.” This would allow traffic to be diverted from built up areas and facilitate a single junction on Merrion Road for “local and regional flows, bicycles and pedestrians.”

Above: Our Lady Queen of Peace Church in Merrion. Will it be heavily affected by the new Merrion Gates proposals?

Photo by Kevin O’Gorman.

Big savings available from local energy scheme

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Harry Bradley ocal energy-conscious community groups have engaged with the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI), a body set up by government with a view to transforming Ireland into a society based on sustainable energy.

The efforts were part of Better Energy Communities, an SEAI initiative that supports new approaches to achieving high quality improvements in energy efficiency.

The programme focusses on improving the energy efficiency of Ireland’s building stock, while supporting the use of renewable energy. It seeks to help businesses and communities complete energy improvements in a more efficient and cost-effective way by clustering buildings in a locality n

under one umbrella project.

One local group that took part in the Better Energy Communities programme last year was St. Andrew’s community project.

Centred around the St Andrew’s Resource Centre, located on Pearse Street, the St Andrew’s team was a co-ordinated effort between Dublin City Council, the Docklands Business Forum, the local St Patrick’s Credit Union, Codema, Wattless, the ESB and Energy Wise Construction to form an action group that strove for and implemented the energy efficient improvements of buildings in the area.

Some of the energy saving measures that were implemented under the project included upgrading lighting to energy efficient LED lights in St. Andrew’s Resource Centre, Irishtown

Stadium and Block E at Pearse House flats. The measures undertaken at Pearse House focused on the public access balcony lighting, which was upgraded to LED lighting with presence detectors and night-time dimming

capacity.

The Docklands Business Forum and St Patrick’s Credit Union provided support through advice, direct finance and competitive loans to St Andrew’s Resource Centre to help it complete its measures, while the Credit Union also offered a very competitive loan rate of 5.5% to those in the community who were involved in works.

The project reduced energy consumption, saving the community in excess of €18,000 over the year, and the plan is to invest that money back into the community. The long-term goal of the project is to establish the foundation for a sustainable energy community in the area by demonstrating successful outcomes from Better Energy Communities 2016 with the hope of

attracting greater interest in the wider community for future programmes.

Administrator of St Andrew’s John Fitzsimons told NewsFour: “We are delighted with the project. It allowed us to upgrade our energy saving facilities and to become more environmentally friendly. I would encourage anyone to get involved in similar projects.”

The Better Energy Communities scheme is closed to applications for this year but will be accepting a new round of applications for next year. Details of the scheme, and guidelines and forms for applying for funding for new energy saving ideas and community projects, can be accessed at: http://www.seai.ie/ Grants/Better_Energy_Communities/

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Kevin Mac Sharry ingsend Community Services Forum recently hosted a question and answer session with local politicians. The chance for the public to meet and put their questions to their local representatives was held in Ringsend College on March 2nd.

The agenda detailed a number of issues. Firstly, explaining the process electing community members to the new Docklands Board. There will be 22 members on the committee, of which four will be councillors.

Cllr. Claire Byrne of the Green Party explained that there was an attempt to appoint someone from the community of Ringsend to the committee, yet there was no agreement about who it should be. Members of the community who attended the meeting expressed their frustration with this.

The next issue involved clarity about employment in the Poolbeg incinerator, and whether there were any full-time jobs for local people. It was stated that there will be 100 jobs in the incinerator, according to Fine Gael councillor Paddy McCartan. There are a certain number of adminn

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Q & A with local politicians in Ringsend

istrative roles, which were filled through the community. However, the vast majority of the jobs are too specialised to be filled locally, according to Labour Senator Kevin Humphries.

Access to the river also arose, especially regarding whether there would be watersports and boating activities for locals. The designation of the Docklands and IGB site as a Strategic Development Zone (SDZ) has raised concerns about access to the river in terms of maritime and community usage.

Labour councillor Dermot Lacey stated that he was on the Docklands Oversight and Consultative Forum and would put this issue forward at its next meeting. Most of the councillors gathered agreed that it was an important amenity, however they

were not forthcoming with solutions to this issue.

Regarding the issue of housing in Ringsend, Cllr. Dermot Lacey reiterated his commitment to 30% social housing on the IGB development. He also stated that he had always supported homeless services.

Many of the other councillors such as Cllr. Paddy McCartan also expressed their commitment to more than the 10% formally proposed in the plans. Councillor Claire Byrne and leader of the Green party, Eamon Ryan TD, stated they would be arguing for one-third social housing, one-third private housing and one-third affordable housing.

Sen Kevin Humphries as well as Cllr. Chris Andrews from Sinn Féin praised the Housing Action Group for their commitment with

Kevin Humphries praising their professionalism and thoroughness.

Increased anti-social behaviour in park and pubs as well as the drugs crisis were the final issue of the question and answer session.

Cllr Mannix Flynn argued it was primarily due to “bad estate management,” whether in Ringsend or anywhere else, a point pertaining to a lack of services. He argued passionately that legalising drugs or the current practice of having safe injection centres was not a solution as these people were leaving the centres and going on to the street. He felt there was a need for private security firms to patrol neighbourhoods as the gardaí were over-stretched.

Sen Humphries felt that community projects where they “worked on each individual

place” through the former organisation of the Small Groups Park’s Committee was very effective and was making progress in dealing with drug use in the park before it was shut down.

The next RCSF organised meeting with local politicians will probably occur in September this year.

Pictured, left to right: Cllr Claire Byrne (Green Party), Cllr Dermot Lacey (Labour), Cllr Frank Kennedy (Fianna Fail), Cllr Kieran Binchy (Fine Gael), Cllr Paddy McCartan (Fine Gael), Cllr Mannix Flynn (Independent), Eamon Ryan, TD (Green Party), Senator Kevin Humphries (Labour), Cllr Chris Andrews (Sinn Féin), Sueann Moore, and Smasher Kemple.

Photo by Tom Crilly.

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n Harry Bradley he tax affairs of locally based IT giants Facebook and Google hit the headlines late last year when it was revealed that both firms paid remarkably low tax rates on huge profits generated in Ireland in 2015. If as critics suggest, these large tech companies are not paying their fair share of tax in Ireland, NewsFour asks: do they benefit the local community in any other significant ways?

It was reported in the national press in December last that Facebook Ireland Ltd, which at the time employed some 1,500 people in Ireland, had paid only €16.53m corporate tax in 2015 against a record revenue of €7.89bn for that year. Criticism of this disproportionately low tax bill prompted a spokesperson for Facebook Ireland to state: “We do not avoid tax.

We comply with all tax laws in the countries in which we operate.”

Google Ireland Ltd paid taxes in 2015 on profits of €341m, a tiny percentage of the company’s Irish revenues of €22.6bn. Google Ireland Ltd is one half of Google’s ‘double Irish’ tax structure, a controversial arrangement that exploits loopholes to allow taxable revenue from other countries to be

LOCAL DEVELOPMENT re-allocated to offshore tax havens so as to avail of even lower tax rates there.

Such practices by Google as routing advertising sales from British customers through the Irish tax system drew the wrath of thenUK chancellor George Osborne, who considered that such practices “abused the trust of the British people.”

These revelations regarding both companies’ Irish tax affairs coincided with UK-based charity Oxfam announcing in December 2016 that it considered Ireland to be a “tax haven.” Oxfam explained that it considered that the Irish government facilitates large-scale international profit shifting for tax evasion purposes assisted by a low corporate tax rate and tax incentives for ‘foreign investors’, such as Facebook and Google. For these reasons it awarded Ireland the dubious status of “the world’s sixth worst corporate tax haven.”

The CEO of Oxfam Ireland, Jim Clarken, stated: “Ireland is part of a toxic global tax system servicing the very wealthiest, while ordinary people pay the price and lose out on essential public services.”

All this occurs against the backdrop of an accommodation crisis in the Dublin 4 area that is in no

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Facebook and Google in the Community small part driven by a housing demand from workers in new local industries, who are snapping up properties while driving rents up across the board.

Given the ‘mixed blessing’ of having large tech firms moving into the area, which create employment while at the same time negatively affecting the rental accommodation market, NewsFour decided to enquire into how both Facebook and Google contribute to the local community directly, if not by paying reasonable levels of tax on profits generated here in their host country.

A spokesperson for Facebook explained to NewsFour that as part of its efforts to benefit local communities, the company works in partnership with The Early Learning Initiative (ELI) at the National College of Ireland on the work they do with local communities to address disadvantage through a comprehensive programme that provides for children, their parents, families, and educators.

The spokesperson explained that each year Facebook takes part in a mentoring programme, which sees 55 volunteers from Facebook work with over 90 students from schools in Ringsend and East Wall for five weeks. The volunteers and students work on workplace skills such as listening, responding and presenting. In addition to the Mentoring Programme, monetary donations and donating laptops, Facebook also works with the ELI team to support promotional and fundraising awareness through campaign development and ad credit.

At Christmas, Facebook hosts a party for families in the Parent Child Programme. The company takes part in the Focus Ireland, Shine a Light Campaign to raise vital funds and to stand in solidarity with people experiencing homelessness in Ireland. Last year, 45 people slept out on Facebook’s rooftop balcony and raised over €23,000.

The company holds a company fun-run to raise funds for the Crumlin Medical Research Fund (CMRF). In 2016, they also held awareness and fundraising events for UNICEF, DSPCA, Debra Ireland, Suicide or Survive and Pieta House, the spokesperson said.

Google responded to NewsFour’s enquiry into how it engages with the local community by stating its policy that, “at Google Ireland, we care about and support the communities where we work and live. Using the skills, talents, and resources we have, we aspire to improve and change the world in a meaningful way for our communities, neighbours and partners.”

A spokesperson explained that GooglersGive is the company’s outreach programme for charities. It matches the donations of volunteering time and money that employees donate to charities and other public benefit organisations.

It was explained to NewsFour that in 2016 Google matched over €600k of Google worker’s donations to charities and that Google employees volunteered almost 8,000 hours of their time to NGOs, including local charities and

schools in the Ringsend area. So, as with elements of Facebook’s programmes, the scheme appears to put considerable emphasis for charitable and community involvement on voluntary efforts from the company’s workers.

The scheme benefitted Marian College; ‘Age Engage’, a mentoring programme for local older residents; and other volunteering projects with local community groups.

The company considers that it is “helping to build a sustainable, world-class start-up ecosystem in Dublin through mentorship, support of community programmes and facilitating access for Irish start-ups to world class… entrepreneurs’ programmes.” They seek to do this by “working closely with our TechHub partner, Dogpatch Labs, and the wider start-up community supporters, to nurture and grow the next generation of innovators”.

A Google education scheme is “centred around supporting Ireland to become a centre of excellence for Computer Science and STEM education.” This proceeds through partnerships, grants, programmes for students and teachers, and volunteering. A partnership with Trinity College saw a new Postgraduate Certificate in 21st Century Teaching and Learning delivered.

Google.org supported a public call for innovation operated by Social Innovation Fund Ireland called ThinkTech. This call offered an award fund of €750,000 divided between three or four innovative solutions that use technology

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to solve critical social issues in Ireland. The award consisted of €600,000 in grants and €150,000 in non-financial support targeting growth, including a package of Google assistance and a €500,000 grant, that was matched by the Irish Government, totalling €1 million.

Google hopes the partnership “will support social entrepreneurs, non-profits and individuals to enhance their impact through the use of relevant tools and resources in the digital world”. The scheme then is geared towards an indirect free market/ entrepreneurial model of intervention that will presumably benefit wider Irish society, if the digital entrepreneurs it seeks to create happen to pay their taxes here.

In addition, NewsFour was told that Google have been major supporters of Dublin Science Gallery on Pearse Street, providing a grant of €1million in 2012 and grants to provide trips for students from disadvantaged areas to the Gallery.

Company employees also provide support and are involved at board level in the Science Gallery.

The spokesperson for Google Continued from page 1 When the McAleese Report was released in 2014, Claire McGettrick, co-founder of Justice For Magdalenes Research and coordinator of the Magdalene Names Project, said that the report failed victims and their families and that it “unquestionably reflects the information provided by the religious orders, and only that information.”

This is a cause for concern amongst campaigners for justice for the survivors of the laundries, who point to the discrepancies in the records kept by the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity in the Magdalene Laundry in High Park, Drumcondra, which was sold for redevelopment in 1993. Undertakers exhuming the bodies of women interred in a burial ground adjacent to the convent, for reburial in Glasnevin Cemetery, found 155 bodies, 22 of them undocumented.The nuns who operated the High Park facility described the inconsistencies as an administrative error and have said that their documentation has since been revised.

The remains of the High Park women were eventually cremated, without DNA identification, and re-interred in Magdalene plots at Glasnevin Cemetery.

There, according to the Justice for Magdalenes group, the bodies of over 100 former residents of the laundry are buried in wrongly

stated that the company is interested in engaging with the local community and groups: “Through grant-making and local initiatives, we’re working to help businesses, schools and non-profits in our data centre community thrive. We’re always seeking opportunities for Googlers [Google employees] to share their time and expertise with the local community. Local community groups, NGOs and schools can apply for grants annually through the Dublin data centre website.”

Given that both Facebook and Google pay relatively little tax in Ireland compared to their global turnover, there is a view that it is not unreasonable to expect these highly profitable companies to engage with local community groups in a planned and coherent way to invest in creating sustainable communities in Dublin 4 that are open to technological and industrial innovation, while maintaining and celebrating the area’s distinctive docklands identity and its existing cultural, social and community resources.

This will require planning, targeting and coherent social policy

from the companies, that should be arrived at through consultation between the companies and local community groups, and it should involve detailed studies and consideration of how the presence of both Facebook and Google impact the community.

This process should be subject to periodic strategic review. There should be consideration of both the positive aspects of local industry

PAGE 15 creating local employment, adding to the local economy, and contributing to local community projects; but there should be consideration also of how they might address effects that can negatively impact the wider local community in essential areas, such as local accommodation rental costs and the economic disadvantages that block access to education and employment.

A lack of joined-up planning

What lies behind these walls? marked or unmarked graves. There are fears that the High Park experience may be repeated in Donnybrook.

Councillor Mannix Flynn argues that there is little point focusing on isolated institutions, “without examining the history and legacy of the entire network of coercive confinement in Ireland.” This includes the Magdalene Laundries, the Industrial Schools, mother and baby homes, the Bethany Laundries, prisons and mental hospitals. He told NewsFour: “We don’t need the ‘horrorfest’ in the media that comes with every new revelation, we need to bury our dead and move forward in a sober way. We forget, the media forgets and society forgets that at the core of this are people. We need to de-emotional-

ise ourselves, move past the sentimentality and hold truth and justice to account. We already know that they are there – that in every one of these institutions you’re going to find remains. What’s needed now is proper advocacy for the survivors; many are still struggling with practical problems such as health and housing… we need to acknowledge this and take responsibility for their practical, emotional and spiritual needs.” He added: “Civil society was aware of what was happening at the time, but failed to intervene. All of Irish society benefited from the labour of the women who were held in the laundries, right up to the highest in the land.”

Amongst the artefacts discovered in the abandoned laundry

building are the baskets which were used to deliver laundry to Aras an Uachtarain, Lansdowne Road Rugby Club and to the Fire Service. Councillor Flynn would like to see these and other artefacts found in the abandoned laundry (such as ledgers, laundry baskets, statues and other paraphernalia of the laundry business) preserved “as an important part of our industrial and institutional heritage” until a suitable home is found for them.

The Donnybrook Laundry was one of the four Magdalene residential, commercial and for-profit facilities in Dublin where young women worked, without pay, in miserable conditions which have been well documented elsewhere.

It was founded by two lay people in 1796. In 1883, it was taken over

around how large industry might integrate within the pre-existing Dublin 4 communities in mutually beneficial ways is not in the longterm interests of the community, nor indeed the industries that they are host to.

Page 14: Facebook Headquarters. Below: Google Headquarters.

Photos by Kevin O’Gorman.

by the Religious Sisters of Charity who ran it for more than a century, until it was sold it in 1992 to a private company, who continued to operate it on a commercial basis until 2006. The Donnybrook facility accommodated about 100 women at any one time over much of the period of its operation.

Most of the young women who worked in the laundries were sent there because they were seen as ‘promiscuous’ or were unmarried mothers or the daughters of unmarried mothers. Some were condemned to a life of servitude simply because they came from poor families, who were powerless to stop the State taking them into ‘care’. Others had been sexually abused, or had grown up in the care of the Church and State.

Councillor Flynn has called for a National Day of Mourning for the victims “to make people think deeply about what it means – that this was allowed to happen in our country, and to make people feel, rather than hear about or read about what truly took place behind the walls of the institutions involved.”

He believes that a state funeral to commemorate the dead would be appropriate but more importantly he would like to see “an acknowledgement of the responsibility we all have towards the survivors”.

Above: Magdalene laundry room.

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ALIGHT! bus tour delights audiences

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n Harry Bradley he nights of February 26th, 27th and 28th saw local audiences treated to the ALIGHT! Mystery History Cabaret Tour, a magical bus tour around the Ringsend, Irishtown, Pearse Street and Sandymount area that incorporated innovative community-based storytelling, dance, art and performance projects.

The ALIGHT! bus tour project, which was part of DCC’s citywide Culture Connects initiative, included local performers, and the performance pieces celebrated personal stories and social history collected in the area.

The tour saw a specially commissioned double-decker bus col-

lect audience members at Pearse Street and St. Patrick’s Church over the three nights and the lucky participants were whisked off to three locations, where they enjoyed vibrant performances based on local themes.

En route, passengers on the cheerily-decorated bus enjoyed banter and dexterous juggling performances from their madcap host Jitterbug Jackson, as well as humorous and poignant stories of local characters from ALIGHT! bus conductor and local storyteller Anthony O’Reardon.

James Joyce himself even made a special guest appearance on the journey to point out the significance of the locality to his literary masterpiece Ulysses.

The first stop of the tour was at St. John’s Church, Sandymount, where audiences enjoyed an evocative dance, drama and spoken word piece performed in the church building. The piece was based upon a personal romance narrative sourced locally and was preceded by impressive musical performances by church organists Tom Maxwell and Matthew Breen.

Pearse Square Park was the next destination, where the park under starlight provided the perfect natural setting for a stunning dance arrangement performed to music and readings of Yeats’s poetry inspired by Irish fairy lore.

The piece was a collaboration between dancers from CoisCéim dance company and Emma Martin, Aoife Kinsella, Roisín Cork and Englentina Doda of talented local baton-twirling performance group The Dazzlettes.

The tour destinations concluded in The Vintage Inn, Irishtown Road, with performances referencing local history, which included fine musical renditions and drama from Kathy Gleeson.

In an atmospheric upstairs room of the historic pub building, local actor Philip Murphy delivered a powerful and evocative one-man performance in a dramatic piece exploring wartime themes from the locality.

Belfast-based performer Hugh Brown, who played the part of jovial tour guide and en-suite resident juggling clown Jitterbug Jackson, explained the process of engaging with locals to create the event: “It was an amazing experience to come here as the ultimate ‘blow-in’ from Belfast; work with people from Pearse Street, Ringsend, Irishtown and Sandymount; collect stories and be inspired by the stories to create little pieces of theatre and writing and dance with CoisCéim and their Director/Choreographer Muirne Bloomer. It’s been a wonderful experience and I’ve learned a lot about the area.

I’ve been welcomed and looked after here and I hope that we’ve done justice to the stories of the local people”.

The ALIGHT! Mystery History Cabaret Tour project certainly brought local history alive while delighting audiences over the three nights of its run. One active local who performed as part of the project was ALIGHT! musician and actor, and Vintage Inn owner, Kathy Gleeson. Speak-

ing to NewsFour on what the project had brought to the area she said: “I think it really got people talking. So many people who maybe never entered the church on Saint John’s Road all of a sudden experienced some theatre and dance there. And the monument on Irishtown Road for the doctor and artist William Ashford how many of us knew about him?

“At Pearse Park, again, people experienced theatre and dance in a space that you pass by every day. On a wider scale when you look at all the events Dublin’s Culture Connects did with the ALIGHT! bus, using it to bring local groups to cultural buildings within the capital and engaging with local schools on projects that would inspire them to understand the nature and culture around them – you’d have to say it was a great success and I think more good things will come from this.”

When asked how such projects contributed to the local community in these times of change with the Poolbeg SDZ development, the firing up of the Covanta incinerator and big business moving into the area, Gleeson replied: “There’s no doubt our area is changing massively, but there is a vibrancy to our little village on the edge of all this development. Community groups are developing and changing all the time. I definitely think that our village will at some point develop an arts festival and judging by the feedback from the recent

Mystery History Cabaret there’s definitely room for more theatrical, musical and cultural endeavours to engage with community groups so as to keep telling our stories and celebrating our traditions and culture”.

Information on the wider Culture Connects programme, and images and videos from the local ALIGHT! project, can be found at: dublinscultureconnects.ie.

Pictured at Dublin’s Culture Connects Mystery History Cabaret are, clockwise from top left: Caoimhe Mulcahy and Rory Dignam performing at St. John the Evangelist church in Sandymount.

Performing in Pearse Square, is Amy Kellett from Coisceim BROADREACH youth programme.

On the ALIGHT! bus was Rodney Devitt as James Joyce.

All photographs by Marc O’Sullivan.

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APRIL / MAY 2017

Train for an emergency

A

Paul Carton lthough many people at some time in their lives have done a first aid course, either through employment or necessity, having the know-how and confidence to take control when those skills are needed will depend on the time since you were last trained.

St. John’s Ambulance, who have their headquarters on Upper Leeson Street, provide emergency care training to the public.

Paul Downes, who has volunteered with them for 40 years and who is now their Director of Central Organization Support, allowed NewsFour some insight into an organization that relies on donations to keep its operations intact, and has done so for over 100 years.

St. John’s provide different types of courses, including a first-aid refresher course that must be taken every two years in order for someone to be qualified, and a parent/toddler course that Downes said is “proving to be very popular at the moment with the drive being ‘It’s something I need to do’”.

With a mission statement such as, ‘we want to ensure that nobody is left anywhere without medical attention,’ St. John’s Ambulance are busy throughout the year, contracted for live events such as matches and runs – the Dublin Marathon being their biggest one.

This emergency care organization recruit volunteers from the age of 11 as cadets but not all stay. As Downes explains: “When they reach adulthood, it’s a pivotal point in their lives with pressures of life, college and n

work, but those who do remain and do so up to the age of 24 are recognized with a transitional medal which is highly regarded within St. Johns.”

The training route for volunteers starts with Basic FirstAid, then to the Emergency First Responder and then on to a Emergency Medical Technician (EMT). Downes, who is also a senior instructor, was put to the test himself last June when he saved someone from drowning near the Point Depot, after a Neil Young concert. The man with the heart of gold is expecting to receive a Life-Saving Medal at an international St. John’s ceremony in June (on St. John’s Day) for this act of bravery which saw him swim out towards sea and bring an unconscious, drowning man to safety from polluted and ice-cold waters.

Downes informed NewsFour that St. John’s train people to deal with the up and down of the rush of adrenaline and that responders need to be mindful that “you’re not a superhero, which is an immediate thought. You have to have realistic expectations.

Managing your own well-being is a priority.” Downes also commended the bystanders and the fire rescue boats that helped pull himself and the unconscious man out of the Liffey.

Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and the use of an Automated External Defibrillator (AED) are included in the basic first aid course with St. John’s. In addition, it has training to help patients that have suffered sports injuries like sprains and fractures. Downes explained what exactly you are doing to

VOLUNTEERING

the patient’s heart while carrying out CPR and using an AED: “The heart can occlude so much blood due to its size and with the arteries being so narrow. By doing CPR you are changing the thoracic pressure in order to keep the blood flowing, and if you use an AED you are reading the patient’s ventricular fibrillation and ventricular tachycardia and then resetting the heart which allows the heart’s own internal pacemaker to take over.”

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NewsFour asked Downes how the trainees are taught to cope with a tragedy. “In instances like cot death or such tragic events, your nurturing nature can take over and this is where you need to have empathy rather than sympathy. With empathy you can step back and understand, whereas with sympathy it can bring you deeper in and have an effect on what you do, and all this is a core part of our training,” Downes explained.

St John’s are a volunteer organisation. If you are interested in volunteering or wish to receive training, please visit: www. st.john.ie. Donations are warmly appreciated.

Above: St John’s Ambulance volunteers on duty at Leinster Rugby match.

Below left: Volunteers going through a first aid training exercise Photos courtesy of St John’s Ambulance.

IN PROFILE

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East Coast President

Mick Curry on maintaining Ringsend’s rowing tradition

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Jennifer Reddin tella Maris’s 80th anniversary year got off to a good start when, on January 22nd, lifelong club member Mick Curry was appointed Honorary President of the East Coast Rowing Council, a position he will hold for the coming year. A popular choice, Mick is renowned in rowing circles for his courtesy, good humour and for his dedication to the sport of skiff racing.

He has been at the rowing game for a long time. Growing up on Pigeon House Road at a time when all that stood between the houses and the Liffey was the sea wall at the end of the gardens, it was inevitable that he spent his early days “messing about on the river,” fishing, swimming or paddling punts.

He told NewsFour, “Kids had a lot more freedom then. When we were young, we would spend the day having fun in the water down at the Point and wouldn’t be back home except for your dinner or your tea.”

He took up oars for Stella Maris when the Under-16 division was first introduced into the sport. Before that, there were only three divisions – Senior, Junior and Under-18. Now there are sixteen.

Mick and his crew tasted early n

success. They were the first Stella squad to win the Morgan Tyrrell Trophy, inaugurated in honour of a neighbour of Mick’s.

Although he has competed in and won many races since then, he says: “That’s still the best for me, winning that trophy for the first time.”

He has wonderful recollections of going to regattas along the coast in his early days with the club when “everyone got on the back of the truck with the boat.

The younger kids were put on the inside and the older people hung on the outside. The driver would say ‘no one is getting on’.

Then as soon as he got into the truck we would all jump on. Noone thought it was dangerous then but when you see it – now you wouldn’t get away with it.

Back then, going to Wicklow or Greystones was like your holiday.”

The local regatta was the highlight of the year in Ringsend, a day when everyone from the village would go down to the river. People who had left the area would come back to catch up with old friends. There were Factory Races, Punt Races, Dockers Races and hams suspended at the end of a greasy pole to be won.

When he wasn’t rowing for the Stella, Mick was a keen fish-

erman. He recalls: “Along here, there used to be a lot of salmon fishing, between here and the Point. We would catch whitebait and grey mullet. A lot of the fishermen were sailors who would go off for six months to Japan or all around America with Irish Shipping during the winter.

In the summer, they would come home and do their fishing and row for the Stella and then go off on another trip. At one time, there were trawlers here, a fishing fleet in Ringsend, fishing in the bay. No one fishes commercially here now. The last one was Michael Purcell, he had a trawler here until he died about 15 years ago.”

Although Mick is in favour of any development that brings benefits to the local community, he is far from happy with some of the changes that have taken place along the river. He deplores the “lack of joined up thinking” that brought the sewerage works and the incinerator to the area and with them increased traffic “being moved from one bottleneck to another.”

For this, he lays the blame at the feet of the local politicians who failed to limit these threats to the environment, the character of the area and to the future of the clubs along the river. “We have the worst politicians in the coun-

try; they never stand up for the community. If you had a Jackie Healy Rae or someone like that here it wouldn’t happen” he said.

He views the latest plans for development in the area with a jaundiced eye; experience has taught him that “if they get it half in, they’re through.” Mick draws on previous experience, with Roche and DCC, when the East Link road and bridge were first proposed, and believes that the community was naïve to accept assurances given to them at the time.

Promises that the new road would never be linked to any other road and even of gardens to replace the ones lost to the toll road were made to be broken, it transpired. He says, “Ringsend is being pushed further and further inland, away from the river.

We’re the last of the river people in Dublin. Before the bridges were built, when the boats used to go up to Custom House Quay, a lot more people and communities were connected to the river.

We’re the only ones left. Before all of this, we had the whole river but now in Ringsend we are lucky to get eight boats across, and if any more of this comes, where do we race? Because this is our tradition, it will be a huge loss if it goes.”

Mick no longer rows in competition. These days, he helps with training and acts as coxswain when needed. When he is not at the club or on the water he enjoys his golf and is a member of Clarke’s Golfing Society.

Last season, his beloved Stella once again won the overall East Coast Championship. As the club celebrates its 80th anniversary this year, he is looking forward to another season at the top and proudly tells NewsFour, “We are the best club on the East Coast. Our crews have the confidence, as soon as they are under pressure, to always pull it out and you can see them coming through.” He puts this down to the preparation and dedication of the members.

He loves to see that whole families are now involved in rowing. “That’s the best, watching them all having picnics and enjoying the competition at the regattas. Rowing gives the kids improved fitness. It gives them confidence. They get to meet a lot of other people from along the coast. It’s good that they are keeping a tradition alive that was always here; an important tradition that is part of our identity.”

Pictured: Mick Curry in his favourite environment.

Photo by Kevin O’Gorman.

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APRIL / MAY 2017

Paul Carton sing the Poolbeg towers as your logo for a Dublin product would be just as iconic as a New York company using the Statue of Liberty, yet Joey Shore of the Irishtown Brewing Company (IBC) couldn’t believe his luck when he discovered nobody had used it yet.

In operation since October 2016, the IBC have already made an impression on the craft beer scene, picking up a Silver Medal in the lager category at the Alltech Craft Brews and Food Fair at the RDS in February of this year. According to Shore, they are projecting to have 55 taps across Dublin pouring out their beer by the end of March.

Directors Joey Shore and Flor Prendergast already have a drinks business – Malone’s Whiskey Company – which they administer out of Harmony Row in Dublin 2.

However, the Irishtown Brewing Company’s brewery isn’t based there and Shore told NewsFour that they are looking for a place to set up in Irishtown and at the rate his company is moving he reck-

n

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Towers of brew

ons they should have their new home set up in this area by next year. They are currently using Hope Brewery’s equipment based in Kilbarrack, just a few metres down the road from where Shore grew up, before his family moved to Kilkenny when he was nine.

Seeking the right person to develop the recipe for their session beers, Shore and Prendergast recruited the expertise of Cuilan Loughnane from the White Gypsy Brewery through word of mouth. Shore recalls

when he met Loughnane and suggested what he needed of him: “I said to Cuilan, ‘I want to make a craft beer,’ and he replied, ‘sure everyone’s making craft beers.’

‘OK,’ I said, ‘I want to develop a brand,’ and he replied, ‘now you’re talking.’”

The IBC are devoted to making session beers and Shore recalls a period of Ire-

land’s history that ‘session beer’ relates to. It was a time when workers were allowed two drinking sessions during their work day and so this called for beers with a lower alcohol by volume (ABV).

IBC are using Czech, German and American hops in their Dublin blonde lager and Dublin ‘Red’ pale ale which they are currently in

the process of hitting the offlicence trade with, in cans.

It is designed with a 1950’s theme with blonde and redhaired temptresses alongside the Poolbeg towers. This branding with the Dublin name and figures was surprisingly developed by brand and retail specialists, Ball and Socket, who are based in Blackpool in Cork, although Shore doesn’t think the beer will sell well down there.

However, this branding is coming at a cost, as Shore is noticing a lot of these designer glasses are going missing from the bars and so he has set up a crowdfunding campaign for anyone who wishes to purchase one directly from the IBC. Shore, a marketing specialist, makes parallels with how his brewery and Irishtown got its name whereby, due to the Statutes of Kilkenny, the Irish were pushed out into this area to camp and how the big breweries have done the same with the smaller ones.

Pictured: Directors of Irishtown Brewing Company Joey Shore and Flor Prendergast.

Picture by Anthony Griffin.

MARITIME HISTORY

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Dublin Port – a valuable legacy

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Jennifer Reddin ublin is an historic port city. Central to its evolution as Ireland’s most important trading centre is the River Liffey and the mercantile trade that developed around it.

For early settlers, the river’s estuary provided a substantial and easily defended harbour to the east and the flat plains to the west afforded easy access to the rest of the island, making the area an appealing place to set up home.

A thriving secular community existed on the south banks of the river, in the area around Wood Quay, before the arrival of the Vikings during the 8th and 9th Centuries. Downriver, a monastic community had been established close to where Trinity College now stands.

When the Viking invaders, and later the Normans, fortified the region, the city as we now know it began to take shape, with the river and the marine traffic it facilitated at its core.

Dublin’s wide bay was a notoriously dangerous place for shipping. Tidal dynamics caused the formation of large sandbanks in the harbour; a mixed blessing, they provided some degree of protection from invasion but shipwrecks were common. Nevertheless, by the 11th Century, thanks to trading links with England, Dublin prospered and it soon became Ireland’s most important urban centre.

The original Port of Dublin was located close to where Liberty Hall now stands. The mouth of the river was shallow and prone to silt, making it difficult to navigate, as did the shipping channel in the bay, which was too shallow for larger vessels.

During high winds, ships had to seek shelter in Ringsend or Clontarf. There, they would unn

load cargo and passengers in order to lighten their load before they could proceed upriver.

In 1716, responding to demands for a resolution from the city’s merchants, Dublin Corporation established a committee known as the Ballast Office Committee.

The Ballast Office started work on what would become the Great South Wall in 1715.

The project set out to protect the riverbanks on the south side of the channel at the mouth of the harbour, running from Ringsend to Poolbeg.

The original mud banks were replaced with the South Bull Wall in 1753, in the aftermath of a particularly stormy winter. When completed, it was the world’s longest seawall.

On September 29th, 1767 the Poolbeg Lighthouse at the end of the Bull Wall was lit for the

first time.

In 1781, John Beresford, First Commissioner of Revenue for Ireland, appointed the celebrated architect, James Gandon, to design a new Custom House.

When it opened in 1791, the Port of Dublin and the axis of the city moved further downriver and trade and development started to expand on the north side of the water.

Despite the relocation of the port, sandbars continued to create dangerous conditions for shipping and the estuary was still extremely difficult to navigate. In 1800, Captain William Bligh (of Mutiny On The Bounty fame) recommended the construction of a Bull Wall to run from east-to-west, following a survey of the harbour. This, he believed, would prevent the build-up of sand in the bay. In time, Dublin Corporation decided to build the new wall southeast from Clontarf, which proved to be an enormous success.

The port grew steadily during the following years. George’s Dock was developed in 1821, providing large warehouses and storage vaults to form part of the Custom House Dock Area.

During 1836, construction work began on deep-water berths at the North Wall. The North Bull Wall was completed in 1842. As predicted, it created a natural

scouring action and the sandbar dropped by several metres over the following fifty years, making the river channel more accessible to trade vessels. Another outcome of its completion was the accumulation of sand along its side, which caused the creation of Bull Island.

In 1859, the renowned Irish engineer, Bindon Blood Stoney, was appointed as Executive Engineer to the Dublin Ballast Board. Later, in 1867, he became Chief Engineer at Dublin Port. During his tenure he oversaw the construction of nearly 7,000ft of quay walls along both north and south banks of the Liffey, making it a deep-water port. He improved the channel between Dublin Bay and the city with a specially designed dredging plant and oversaw the construction of the North Wall Extension and the Alexandra Basin. He replaced the tidal berths with deep-water berths for overseas vessels, invented a diving bell and perfected the means to use precast concrete in construction. He is also responsible for the design of Grattan Bridge, O’Connell Bridge, and Butt Bridge.

Further deep-water berths in the Alexandra Basin were completed

before World War One. Ocean Pier, to the south-east of Alexandra Basin, was opened shortly after World War Two. Today, Dublin Port handles 44% of all port trade in the Republic of Ireland. As we look forward to the next stage of its development, with the publication of the Masterplan Review 2017, it is timely to remember with gratitude those long gone who gifted us such a valuable legacy.

Clockwise from top: This 1760 map by John Rocque shows the environs of Dublin Port at that time.

Bindon Blood Stoney, progressive Chief Engineer in the 19th century.

Historic River Liffey port trade near the Customs House.

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DUBLIN PORT

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The Dublin Port Company Masterplan Review 2012 – 2040

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Jennifer Reddin he Dublin Port Company (DCP) Masterplan Review 2012 – 2040 went on public display at a series of information days which were held in Clontarf, East Wall and Ringsend, during the week February 13th – February 16th, 2017.

The Information Days were part of an ongoing consultation process which has already involved significant discussions with the local community and with statutory and non-statutory stakeholders, including customers, employees, and interest groups concerned with the port. Members of the public were invited to make submissions to DPC before March 7th in response to the Review.

The Masterplan Review sets out proposals for the development and operation of Dublin Port for the next 30 years. The principal objective of the project is to meet the growing demand for greater port capacity. Economic recovery is well underway and the prospects for future growth are encouraging. Traffic at the port has risen sharply for the past four years and DPC are under pressure to bring infrastructure development projects forward to keep up with demand.

The challenges facing the architects of such a long-term plan are immense, with a number of tough, not always mutually comn

patible, goals to be achieved. It has to guarantee the continued safe operation of the port and allow for sustainable growth. It must assure customers of the port about future capacity. The needs of the local communities and issues around the environmentally sensitive shoreline have to be considered. It has to provide a context for future investment decisions and bring about increased efficiencies.

Development must be consistent with national and local planning frameworks and with national policies. In addition, plans for the port must be compatible with those for the docklands area, Dublin city and neighbouring counties, which are always subject to change.

DPC would also like to forge closer links between the port and the city. To this end, a number of recreation and amenity proposals, many of which were outlined in the Soft Values Strategic Framework, approved by the DPC Board in 2012, are included in the Review.

One such initiative, Riverfest, takes place on the Liffey over the June Bank Holiday weekend and is already a huge success with the public.

There are plans to enhance the visual impact of the port area and to soften its boundaries to the city by providing a public realm, which will include a new herit-

age centre and maritime garden at the Port Centre. There will be more waterside access, including pedestrian and cycle routes, designed to attract more visitors to the area. A number of arts and culture initiatives are also included in the Review.

DPC will continue to support local communities in the areas of education, sport and community events through the company’s CSR programme.

Mindful of environmental concerns and public opinion, DPC plan to optimise the use of current facilities and do not intend to increase the footprint of the port, which could possibly include landfill in Dublin Bay, bound to be a non-runner with the public.

The company trust that this can be done by rationalising the use of existing lands and by recovering lands that are not currently being used for critical port activity.

The review outlines plans to augment the use of the lands on the port estate through rationalising the distribution and location of specific areas of activity such as ro-ro, lo-lo, ferry services, cruise ships, and storage areas, with necessary re-organisation of service facilities as required.

By its very nature the port has an impact on the surrounding ecological environment. Located close to a special Protection Area and a special Area of Conservation, provision for the preserva-

tion of these areas and wildlife habitats, which could potentially be harmed by the expansion of the port, are a critical part of DPC’s strategy.

Included in the review is a commitment to work with habitat and nature interests to ensure that the full resource that these habitats and areas provide for wildlife and for the wider public in Dublin are managed, controlled and supported. This will include an audit of the flora and fauna of Dublin Port to assist with the development and implementation of conservation, preservation and sustainability objectives.

Long-term strategies to manage traffic in and around the port are an important component of the review. DPC aim to develop a transport plan for the port estate in conjunction with the National Transport Authority and Dublin City Council. This will include the provision of public transport routes to serve passengers and those working in the port, the promotion of non-motorised sustainable transport modes, including cycling and walking as well as a commitment to maximise the use of rail transport for goods to and from the port. Provisions to re-route traffic within the port area and enhance the existing infrastructure to provide dedicated access and exit routes to port facilities, are calculated to ease traffic flows on the surrounding

roads.

One exciting element of the review is the proposal to upgrade the port to accommodate much larger cruise liners than they routinely handle. The cruise liner business at Dublin Port has grown significantly in recent years and has the potential to increase further, bringing increased revenue to the local economy.

In 2016, 112 cruise vessels visited the port, a number that is set to increase to 130 in 2017. At present the cruise ships occupy berths that are better suited to cargo vessels and provide an unattractive location for passengers disembarking from the liners.

New berths at the North Quay extension will facilitate passengers on cruise liners to access the city directly. The planned changes will facilitate the development of Dublin as a commencement port for cruises and ensure that the city is in a position to benefit from the continuing growth of this lucrative market.

In our next issue, NewsFour will bring you an update on the community’s reaction to the Masterplan Review. If you would like to see your opinion on the proposed changes included please let us know!

Above: The cruise ship Saga Sapphire II passing the Poolbeg lighthouse.

Photo courtesy Robbie Cox.

PAGE 22

ARTS AND CULTURE

Children reach heights in the arts

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n Harry Bradley wo locally produced video installations, the product of creative work from the Ships Passing in the Night, Culture Connects project, are currently available for viewing at Pembroke Library, Anglesea Road.

Ships Passing is part of the Culture Connects Dublin South East Area project, Light Waves, which sees community groups

link in with CoisCéim Dance Theatre, The Hugh Lane Gallery and the National Gallery of Ireland to explore themes of exploration, connection and disconnection with neighbouring suburban villages.

The videos are the culmination of the project which involved children from the Sandymount Dodder Sea Scouts and the Sikh Community who have their temple in Sandymount. Artist

James Ó hAodha worked with both groups of children on the project, teaching them the basics of morse-code communication, which progressed to a stage where they were able to send each other encoded messages.

Later workshops explored group photography, and the creative staging of images: The children recreated scenes from iconic group photographs and paintings including ‘Lunch Atop A Skyscraper’, ‘The Last Supper’, and Robert Ballagh’s ‘After Goya’, an iconic work that they had viewed and discussed in a visit to The Hugh Lane Gallery.

The first video installation documents the project and shows the various activities the children undertook, offering some narrative around the project.

The second video is the final collaborative artwork; a movingimage piece that ties together the varied strands of the project and uses light and darkness as a medium. The light of a lighthouse is

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mimicked in a way that momentarily illuminates the journey of the project – capturing portraits of all the participants, their community spaces, and the scenes they have created together.

The videos will be on display in Pembroke Library for the rest of the year. The library is open Monday and Tuesday 1.00pm8.00pm; Wednesday and Thursday 10.00am-5.00pm; Friday

APRIL / MAY 2017

and Saturday 10.00am-1.00pm and 1.45pm-5.00pm.

Left: Jaskaren Cheema at a workshop with artist James O’hAodha in the Sikh Temple.

Photograph by Jenny Brady.

Below: Recreation of Lunch Atop a Skyscraper by James O’hAodha and children from the Dodder Sea Scouts and the Sikh community.

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The Grey in the Bay

WILDLIFE

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Protecting our seal population

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Paul Carton he first ever species that was protected by a law imposed by government is here for all to see along our coasts and harbours. The marine mammal known as the grey seal was once a threatened species at the beginning of the last century and its future may have been in jeopardy if not for the UK government prohibiting the hunting and culling of this creature around her channels and seas, which included Ireland’s coasts at the time.

This large mammal is a frequent visitor to our water’s edge and at one particular spot in Dun Laoghaire Harbour these wild but tame creatures are feeding off the surplus fish carcass the Harbour Fish Shop is only too glad to share with their neighbours. Here, it is possible to observe a marine mammal up close and to see that despite its treacherous environment it has a surprisingly pleasant countenance.

The initial law passed to protect the species was abolished a decade after its inception, but the grey seal was again protected in 1976 when the Wildlife Act was established. At present, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) have the Grey Seal’s status as ‘least concern’ on their highly regarded Red List of threatened species, and sanctuaries like the Irish Seal Sanctuary (ISS) and Seal Rescue Ireland have no doubt made this a possibility.

Brendan Price, who founded the ISS and says he’s been rearn

ing and releasing seals back into our seas for the past 30 years spoke with NewsFour about why these mammals need saving and sanctuary, despite being protected by law from hunting and culling.

“The species has two peaks in the year when it is at its most vulnerable due to storms in the October months and early in the year after the weaning period and bad fishing. After this, we find them malnourished and skeleton-like,” said Price, who also remarked that the numbers which needed to be saved this year were low due to the lack of storms, when compared to previous years.

The protection of these pinnipeds has come under scrutiny in recent times due to injuries inflicted by them on swimmers at the forty-foot in Sandycove and the assumption that they are the reason why cod stock levels are not replenishing themselves as they should, to the point where cod has been given a ‘vulnerable’ status on the IUCN’s Red List.

It is these perceptions of the grey seal that Price wishes to see researched and for the public to be aware of before they go into the water.

Price was able to get protocols posted at Dublin Bay for longdistance swimmers to be wary of them and also had signs made at Greystones but somehow the wrong information was circulated about them. “When the divers go near them they are wearing a protective membrane and don’t

feel the bite and then swimmers go in and get bitten,” Price explained. The feeding of the grey seals down at Howth harbour is now illegal and warrants a €3,000 fine imposed by its harbourmaster for anyone caught in the act. Price said the reason for this was due to the unsupervised over-feeding of the seals, which made them fall asleep on the walkways there.

He is also concerned about recent evidence coming through regarding cannibalism and infanticide further up north, where the Royal Society of the Protection of Birds (RSPB) have witnessed attacks. “It was only up until recently that we were able to retrieve information on postmortems because before we were always told that it was natural causes, so now we were seeing wounds which would indicate large predators like a large bull [male grey seal].”

Monitoring the grey seal

movements is a challenge that the ISS are hoping to accomplish. Wildlife photographer Ronan Browne is helping the ISS with this, not only trying to get shots of his own but he has also been in contact with the yacht clubs and the underwater council in the area and plans to retrieve vital information when their season starts in May. The seals are site loyal according to Price, but when the fish shop shuts early on the Saturday for the whole weekend, he wants to know where they go to then.

“Everyone around the bay is familiar with these animals but they aren’t so aware of the ani-

mals’ development and we have 350,000 people who live close to where the seals live, so we have a real challenge here to observe this marine species.”

If you would like to volunteer, watch the documentary, Lanugo, about grey seals that Price helped produce or if you have any information you think would be relevant to our own native species, visit: irishsealsanctuary.org or you can ring the number for the public 087-3245423.

Pictured above and below: Seals at Dun Laoghaire Harbour.

Photos courtesy of Irish Seal Sanctuary.

YOUTH

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RICCYS girls visit equality seminar

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Jessica Ellis group of girls from Ringsend and Irishtown Community Centre Youth Service (RICCYS) were out and about on International Women’s Day. They attended a gender equality seminar hosted by Concern Worldwide at the Carmelite Community Centre on Aungier Street on March 8th.

“Our school, Ringsend College, gave us permission to go because it was educational,” says Amy McGough. “There were five or six schools there – about 25 people. There were people from Marian College and that’s an all-boys school.

They participated a good bit because they obviously felt passionate about it as well.

We played word games and we were asked to write down what came to mind when we think of the word ‘girl’ and they could be negative and positive things.”

Nikita Martin adds: “We were shown a speech that Emma Watson made at the U.N. and talked about how n

differently women were treated than men in third world countries. Some women are still meant to stay home and cook and clean and the men are meant to go out and work and pay for the whole family. It wasn’t just about women’s rights, it got into gender equality.”

Later that day, the girls attended a Smashing Times Theatre production: The Woman Is Present, at Trinity College Dublin and directed by Mary Moynihan. The show, which highlighted women’s roles in the 1916 Easter Rising, was performed by Róisín McAtamney and featured Constance Markievicz speaking about her time in prison and other figures such as her sister Eva Gore-Booth.

“The women weren’t really talked about at all and then you realise that they actually did a load of stuff in it,” Abbie Gannon comments. The show was followed by a question and answer session in which the cast and members of the production interacted with the

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students.

The girls also worked on a women’s empowerment project with the help of youth worker, Niamh Smith. Nikita Martin explains: “Niamh said that Women’s International Day was coming up and asked if we wanted to do a project on it because we have strong views on things like racism and sexism. So we chose a girl or woman who inspired us and we did a project on them and did a Powerpoint and then we drew them on canvas.”

On the subsequent evening, RICCYS held an event showcasing the gallery of inspirational women with great success.

From left to right are Aoife O’Reilly, Nikita Martin, Amy McGough, Abbie Gannon, Sophie Gregg O’Neill who took part in a gender equality seminar for international women’s day organised by Concern Worldwide at the Carmelite Community Centre on Aungier Street.

Photo Courtesy of Niamh Smith.

Foxes and poodles galore creator of Henry Hugglemonster, a new animated show with Disney Junior.

Sharkey talked to the children about considering the personality of the animals and how to illustrate their distinctive features. They were let loose with lots of oil pastels on a ten-metre length of paper to doodle their character designs.

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Jessica Ellis creative and colourful afternoon was had by children from City Quay National School at a storytelling and illustration workshop at Pearse Street Library on Wednesday 29th of March recently.

The event is in association with ALIGHT!, the dance, art and performance project coordinated by Dublin City Council and CoisCéim Broadreach.

Rodney Devitt, an author from Sandymount, gave a reading and performance of two of his children’s stories, Fergal Fox And n

The French Poodle and Sam The Amazing Sheepdog. Devitt was happy to take part in the initiative.

“I love reading my stories and performing them so I’m very happy to be here to do that,” he said. “They lend themselves to both being read alone and almost better still, read aloud to the person and dramatised a little bit.”

With their imaginations inspired, the children from first class then joined Niamh Sharkey to illustrate the characters from Mr Devitt’s stories. Niamh Sharkey is a former Laureate na nÓg, a widely published children’s author and

Sharkey added: “I mostly do picture books, but also animation and an important part of that is character design. I did a few sketches to inspire them, but then it was up to them to interpret and respond to the stories. I just thought it was a great idea to lead a workshop with young kids based on someone else’s stories. I think it is a fantastic

initiative to get writers and illustrators working with kids.”

Left: Two of the children at the workshop show their illustrations. (names forthcoming) Below: All the children get ready to doodle!

Photos courtesy of Cleo Fagan, Dublin City Council.

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APRIL / MAY 2017

Paul O’Rourke ebruary at the RDS saw another edition of Ireland’s largest annual trade show for foodservice professionals, CATEX, roll out an appetising flavour of what’s happening in the growing €6 billion foodie market.

Front and centre amongst the more than 200 exhibitors at the three-day event were representatives from three foreign embassies, Poland, Austria and Brazil, all vying to promote their food and drink offerings amidst stiff Irish competition.

Although this wasn’t a fullon culinary contest, there is no doubt that supermarket shelf space is at a premium these

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Embassies set out their stall

days and more grub is being produced than empty stomachs require. But for those gourmet gobblers in attendance who were a little more desperate to have their competitive itch scratched, they were surely pleased about the barista and cocktail championships or various cooking competitions which catered for and judged everything from cold tapas to hot dessert.

On the subject of international produce, Robert Bak of

IN MEMORIAM

Maureen Barry.

Third Anniversary 19th June.

Mam, you are near even if I don’t see you.

You are in my life, in my thoughts, in my heart always. I will miss you forever.

Our Ringsend Rose.

Love from your daughter Angela.

the Polish Embassy in Sandymount pointed to the more than 150,000 Polish people who live in Ireland and the various speciality shops that supply their favourite home sourced nosh, some of which has successfully crossed over into a typical Irish shopping basket.

Popular Polish fare would include their range of sausages, hams and cheeses, an area where they face stiff competition from the good folk at Advantage Austria, a branch of the Austrian Embassy on Ailesbury Road. It surely would take a cultured set of taste buds to tell the difference between a Polish and Austrian cold cut, but therein lies the fun.

The Brazilian stand, sponsored by their national embassy, had an altogether more eclectic mix of delights, ranging from the punchy spirit ‘Cachaca’, made from freshly pressed sugar cane, to ‘Acai’, a

sort of purple ice-cream made solely from the pulp of the famous and potent Acai berry.

If this food fair is anything to go by, there certainly is no let up in the Irish consumer’s appetite to find new and different ways to tickle our national palate.

Clockwise from left: Some of the delicious food on show at CATEX. Tempting sausages, hams and cheeses from Poland and Austria with, below, the ever-popular pizza.

Photos by Kevin O’Gorman.

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Jennifer Reddin uring 2017, Ireland and Japan will celebrate 60 years of formal diplomatic relations. Since the first diplomatic exchanges took place in 1957, the relationship between the two countries has gone from strength to strength.

Japan is now Ireland’s 11th largest trading partner and the two nations share increasingly important political, economic, educational and cultural ties.

Sixty years is a very significant milestone in the Japanese tradition. It is known as kanreki in Japanese and is considered a time for reflection and celebration, symbolising both the end of one cycle and the beginning of another.

To mark this tradition, both the Irish government and the Embassy of Japan, located in the Merrion Centre in the heart of Dublin 4, have prepared an exciting programme of events which will take place throughout Ireland during 2017.

The year’s celebrations got off to a great start with an official ceremony, hosted by the Minister for Foreign Affairs n

CULTURE

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60 Years and Beyond: The 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Japan and Ireland

and Trade, Mr. Charles Flanagan, at the Department of Foreign Affairs in Iveagh House.

Mr. Fumio Kishida, the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Japan, attended the event as the guest of honour. Minister Flanagan paid a reciprocal visit to Japan on the invitation of the Japanese Government from February 26th to March 4th, where he was warmly received.

To mark the anniversary, An Post issued a special commemorative stamp on February 9th, which celebrates W.B. Yeats and the Noh Tradition. Designed by Dublin-based Zinc Design Consultants, the stamp features a red sun symbol with a gold mask and wings on a black backdrop in the Japanese style.

Yeats had a passionate interest in Japanese culture and adapted the highly-stylised form of Japanese Noh theatre tradition into a number of his plays, most notably, The Death of Cuchulainn and At the Hawk’s Well. The commemorative stamp is based on At The Hawk’s Well, which was first performed in Dublin in 1916.

One of the highlights of the festivities will no doubt be the annual Japanese Film Festival, already a popular element of the Irish film scene. Now in its ninth year, the festival will once again showcase the best of Japanese cinema for Irish audiences and will play at venues around the country.

It starts on April 5th in the Lighthouse Cinema, Dublin.

Details about this year’s Film Festival will be revealed at a special screening of A Silent Voice in partnership with the Lighthouse Cinema on Sunday March 26th.

If you would like to sample a taste of the Japanese way of life. you can do so at the ‘Experience Japan Festival Day’ which will be held at Farmleigh House on April 23rd from 12pm - 4pm. This is a big cultural event with open-air performances, food stalls, lectures about Japanese culture and history and lots more interesting Japanese-themed activities.

If that doesn’t take your

fancy, there are friendly Japan versus. Ireland rugby fixtures, Japanese traditional storytelling events, Tea Ceremony demonstrations, a live art show and a Japanese fashion show to be enjoyed. Or you can pop into the Chester Beatty Library, where eighty stunning prints went on display on March 3rd.

The Art of Friendship: Japanese Surimono Prints exhibition will be open to the public until August 31st and is well worth a visit.

Mr Yuichi Yamada, First Secretary, Press and Cultural Affairs, Embassy of Japan in Ireland, told NewsFour that these cultural exchanges play an important role in deepening the ties between Japan and Ireland.

He is happy to report that during his four years at the embassy he has seen an increasing interest in Japanese culture, particularly amongst

younger people. This is evidenced by the number of Irish students who are now studying the Japanese language at both Leaving Cert’ and at university level, which has increased significantly in recent years.

One reason for this trend he believes, is the current popularity of Manga, Anime and Japanese pop culture, which serve as a “very good entrance to Japanese culture and can lead to an interest in more traditional Japanese culture.”

The people of Japan are very interested in Irish culture too. Mr Yamada says, “Ireland is famous in Japan for your contribution to literature. The four Nobel Laureates (Literature) Shaw, Beckett, Yeats and Heaney are very well-known and widely read there.”

The celebrations this year are called: 60 Years and Beyond: The 60th Anniversary of Diplomatic Relations between Japan and Ireland, and the ambassador and staff at the Embassy of Japan are already looking beyond this year’s festivities and forward to the next phase in the warm relationship that has developed between the two countries.

Mr Yamada said that they hope to see many Irish visitors make their way to Japan for the Rugby World Cup in 2019 and for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympics Games.

All will be assured of a warm welcome and an opportunity to experience the endlessly fascinating culture of Japan for themselves.

Top: Mr Yuichi Yamada, First Secretary, Press and Cultural Affairs, Embassy of Japan Left and below: Stamps issued for WB Yeats and the Noh tradition which inspired him.

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n Jessica Ellis free exhibition exploring the possibilities of artificial intelligence is currently showing at Trinity College Dublin. Humans Need Not Apply, the spring exhibition at the Science Gallery on Pearse Street opened on February 10th recently, and will run until May 14th, 2017.

Art meets technology to explore the possibilities of what role Artificial Intelligence (AI) will play in the future of humanity. Will sentient robots improve our lives or will they take them over?

According to some of the artists showcased at the exhibition, our destiny may be prosperous but others have a more dystopian view of where our quest for advancement will take us. In a humorous, disturbing and thoughtprovoking mixture of themes, the Science Gallery has us ask: “Do our iPhones have a brighter future than we do?”

Creativity We often worry about automated machines taking work from us. It can already be seen happening today if you walk into any McDonald’s or Tesco store, which has decreased its work force by installing self-service devices. But what if artificial intelligence also replaces our value as creators, artists and writers?

Word-Camera, invented by Ross Goodwin, a creative technologist, translates photographs

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Paul Carton rones have made their way into the spotlight for a variety of reasons over the last couple of years.

One notable incident in 2014, involved a drone called a ‘quadcopter’ which landed in the exercise yard in Wheatfield Prison carrying drugs and a camera for the operator to know exactly where to land. The aircraft’s cargo was emptied by the inmates before prison officials arrived on the scene.

With camera facilities onboard, a drone allows the operator a pilot’s view of the drone’s flight path. Emergency services have found it to be of great assistance when searching for live bodies.

NewsFour spoke with Paul Cooney, of the Civil Defence, at the RDS Drone and Tech Show n

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Humans need not apply Will robots put us out of work?

into paragraphs. He explains, “I have been working on it for about two years and reiterating on it. The first version I built in April 2015 was a web app and then I built the physical version inside of an old camera. It uses three different neural networks to narrate an image. This is a device that one day could help you write with a camera rather than a pen.”

“How are we ever going to live in a workplace or home surrounded by robots if we are misunderstanding everything they do all the time?”

Love Lady Chatterley’s TinderBot is an interactive installation created by Libby Heaney, a lecturer at the Royal College of Art. It

explores love in a post-digital age. An artificial intelligence device was programed with the script of D.H Lawrence’s novel and uses phrases solely from

the book in reply to Tinder users with hilarious outcomes. The visitor can swipe right or left on a large screen, imitating the Tinder app, to view positive and negative conversations members of the public have had with the machine.

Work As seen by the numerous films and television series that address the subject, we are fascinated by the prospect of robots in our workplaces and homes.

Anna Dumitriu and Alex May, creators of Antisocial Swarm Robots, ask how will we get

PAGE 27 on living in such close quarters with robots. The installation is a pen, and corralled inside are tiny moving robots that look like insects. They seem to avoid each other and any interactions with the visitor.

May explains, “This piece is about exhibiting robots that are designed to display anti-social behaviour, which people perceive in many different ways, we project our own humanity onto them to understand them. We are trying to figure out if they are happy or sad but of course they are not, they are just robots. This sometimes creates tension or misunderstanding between the human and machine.”

Dumitriu adds, “The question is, if humans have these brains that are constantly trying to read things, and lacking the understanding that we are just dealing with machines here, how are we ever going to live in a workplace or home surrounded by robots if we are misunderstanding everything they do all the time?”

If you have a free hour or two and are curious about an automated future world, there are many more interactive and fun installations to explore at the gallery. Then you can decide for yourself if Artificial Intelligence will be human-led or humanless?

Pictured: A robot arm, one of the installations at the Science Gallery.

Photo by Kevin O’Gorman.

Rise of the machines in March. According to Cooney, there are ten drones used by the Civil defence across the country and it requires two pilots for each drone.

“Our drones are usually called in at the request of Gardaí and

Department of Defence to search for live bodies, or by county councils for forestry surveys,” said Cooney. He recalled two incidents last year, where the Civil Defence were brought in to assist in finding missing peo-

ple off the coasts of Clare and Donegal, when the drones were of great assistance: “They are really useful in storm conditions or when areas are not accessible by foot. They can go out and cover an area for 15-20 minutes before having to come back and recharge.”

Racing these drones has also become a popular nationwide pastime, with FPV Racing Ireland (First Person Racing) increasing from five members two years ago to a current membership of 800 racing enthusiasts.

The Leinster FPV racing division were present at the RDS show and NewsFour spoke with one of its members, Jaak Pieterse, about why there is such interest in the sport he claims to be ‘the sport of the future’.

“These machines are very fast due to being made from carbon

fibre, but because they are being mass-produced in China it’s making them quite cheap to buy,” said Pieterse.

He notes that the operator has the ability to program his controller to suit his own style of flying, but what impresses him more about these machines is the feature of zero latency (the time it takes for the information sent to the machine to be carried out by it). “There is a terrific speed and adrenaline you get with this sport and you can feel your hands trembling because it is so intense.” said Pieterse.

Who knows, your NewsFour issue might be dropped off by one of these drones sooner than you think. For more information regarding registration and legislation please visit: www.iaa.ie Pictured: Civil Defence drone.

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South East Area Community Development News • Spring 2017 GOOD FRIDAY Donnybrook will also have an Easter Egg Hunt following the Community Clean up in the village. Help out and clean your local area and get rewarded with some chocolate for Easter. Full information at Donnybrook Tidy Towns.

EASTER SUNDAY In Sandymount, all the churches are coming together for an ecumenical service on the strand at dawn on Easter Sunday morning. This celebration of light will take place as the sun rise over Dublin bay. Gather on the beach at the old baths before dawn if you want to take part.

Following this, the Sandymount Tidy Towns Community Association will hold an Easter Egg Hunt with the Easter Bunny on the Green at 11.30am. Lots of fun for all the family and some great prizes for those lucky to find the yummy chocolate eggs.

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Easter in D4 2017

fter a rather wet and cold March, we are all hoping for the sun to shine this April.

As Easter falls later than usual this year we have lots on in the D4 Villages to celebrate this traditional season.

The Big Dublin Clean Up will run for the second time in 2017 and this year it will take place on

Friday 14th April between 11am and 1pm. We are encouraging all community, resident, business and environmental groups to get involved and spend a little time caring for your area. The city council will provide clean-up equipment and removal of all litter collected to all groups taking part.

Every year, groups across the city carry out huge efforts throughout the year to make their areas clean, attractive and beautiful places to live and visit. This is an opportunity to coordinate these efforts on one day to showcase the great work being carried out across the city in our various communities.

All groups taking part will also be entered into the Dublin City Neighbourhoods Competition for their efforts and the groups in each area with the best community effort will be in with a chance to win €1,000 for their community at the citywide awards ceremony held in Croke Park in September.

Last year, Donnybrook and Phibsborough shared the overall prize for their Team Dublin Clean Up efforts. Great work Donnybrook. Pictured last year are many of the volunteers and organisers from Donnybrook.

This year, Sandymount and Donnybrook will run the big clean ups. Gather at the plaza in Donnybrook or on the Green in Sandymount and all will be provided. This is a great way to help clean and look after your village and the local tidy towns groups will have special treats on hand for the volunteers.

To get involved, simply contact your South East Area Office at: southeast@dublincity.ie – who will arrange for you to receive equipment and make sure that all litter and rubbish collected by your group is removed on the day.

RINGSEND FESTIVAL Ringsend Festival and Family Fun Day will take place on the weekend of 29th April to 1st May. Following last year’s extensive celebrations for the 1916 Commemoration, the festival will mostly take place on Monday, May 1st, with the annual parade starting from the Ringsend and Irishtown Community Centre and moving around the village. Following the parade, the Family Fun Day will commence at 1.00pm and there will be Bouncing Castles, Live Music, Face Painting and this year a special visit from Wooly Ward’s Mobile Farm, which will bring lots of animals to meet the crowd.

Once again, the Ringsend Dog Show will take place on Saturday, April 29th at 12 noon in Ringsend Park (near the Stadium), with all breeds and especially non-breeds welcome to come and strut their stuff. There will be various categories and a prize for every child who comes with their much-loved pet friend. Registration is from 10.30am on the morning of the Show in the Park.

For further information on the Ringsend Festival, please contact the Ringsend and Irishtown Community Centre, Thorncastle Street, Ringsend on 01-6604789.

WALK & TALK The community initiative, Let’s Walk & Talk continues to grow from strength to strength with 10 weekly walks now taking place in the city, including ones in Irish, French and Spanish. One of these walking groups meet every Thursday at 2pm on Sandymount Green for an enjoyable relaxing stroll around the area and sometimes beyond.

In recent months, they have also taken visits to the Jeanie Johnston, EPIC exhibition at the CHQ and Print Museum and all for free! It’s a great way to stay healthy, meet people and learn something about our Fair City.

Also on offer during the Spring period under this initiative will be some historical walking tours with Pat Liddy.

Please keep an eye on www.letswalkandtalk.ie for updates.

CHAIR AEROBICS FOR OLDER PERSONS Chair Aerobics for older persons commences at Beech Hill Court Community Room in Donnybrook on Mondays at 2pm.

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ART AND CULTURE

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Elias Doodles 4 Google again

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n Jessica Ellis lias Faustina Lawlor, from Shellybanks Educate Together School in Ballsbridge, has become a Doodle 4 Google finalist for the second time in a row. Elias is seven years old and is in first class in the newly established Educate Together school.

Principal Johanne O’Sullivan commends Elias on his achievement: “We are all very proud of Elias for getting to the stage he has in the competition. He is a very talented artist and we encourage our children to enter any competitions that allow them to develop their creativity.”

In this year’s Google competition, students were asked to de-

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Paul O’Rourke ith their seemingly endless self promotion and intense crossplatform selling of a handful of flagship programmes, are the big wigs over in Donnybrook setting the RTE ship on a rocky course towards self-destruction?

It was journalist David Quantick, writing for the wellknown magazine, New Musical Express, who first coined the term, “Pop will eat itself,” in an interview with little-known 80’s band, Jamie Wednesday.

The ‘Wednesday’s’ predicted the canibalisation of pop, due to the endless recycling of old ideas and lack of originality. Thirty years on and while the lack of creative imagination may have been just cause for concern, it’s difficult to argue that the band’s dire prediction actually came to pass (case in point: one Mr. Simon Cowell, who appears to be doing quite nicely, thank you very much).

sign a doodle based on the theme of ‘If I could create anything it would be...’, with the winning doodle appearing on the Google homepage in April.

Elias got through three stages of judging this year to become one of 75 finalists from all over the country and is one of eighteen children from Dublin who are still in with the chance of becoming this year’s overall Doodle 4 Google champion.

Elias’s entry is titled ‘If I could create anything it would be a rainforest in Dublin where I could go and see treefrogs and other animals with my binoculars.’ He likes rainforests “because they have a lot of animals in them.”

Fionnuala Meehan, VP and head of Google in Ireland said: “The level of entries this year has given our judging panel a tough job to do. I really enjoyed seeing what the entrants did with this year’s theme as it gave them the opportunity to create anything they wanted and looking at the entries they show a lot of fantastic innovative ideas.”

The overall winner will receive a €5,000 scholarship towards their third-level studies, a Chromebook, and a €10,000 technology grant for their school.

Pictured: Elias and his fantastic entry.

Photos by Jessica Ellis.

Will RTE eat itself?

n

And so to RTÉ, the most beloved of our state broadcasters.

Tune into Ryan Tubridy’s radio show any weekday morning and there’s a good chance you’ll catch him chatting to someone from Operation Transformation, Dancing with the Stars, The Voice, or First Dates. Turn on the Late Late

Show at the end of a week and you might just get a second chance to hear the identical conversation, only this time with images.

That’s, of course, if Ray D’Arcy hasn’t booked the same guests for his Saturday night slot, but even then the spoils can always be split, with dancers or singers on

one show and judges on the next.

Failing that, the producers can always fall back on the old reliable tactic of grabbing whoever’s left in the RTE canteen (usually a weather person) and dragging them on-set, willingly or not. And so it goes on in a never-ending cycle of self-publicity.

The enduring and unsurmountable problem with Irish television is that there simply aren’t enough stars to go around, never mind programmes to fill the schedule.

The constant need to generate ‘celebrities’ means that an appearance these days for even five minutes on the airwaves, automatically qualifies you to sit on a couch somewhere or star in a reality show. We have celebrity doctors, celebrity lawyers and even celebrity accountants (OK that last bit isn’t true).

Most incredibly, there was an appearance recently by none other than the State Pathologist on a popular reality cooking show (this IS true). If that doesn’t signal the end of days for popular TV, I don’t know what does. Will RTE end up eating itself? When you see Ryan Tubridy appear as a guest on the Ray D’Arcy show, you’ll know it already has.

Above: Three little Ryans.

Design by Stephen Whelan.

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D4 scouting update n

Kevin Mac Sharry

DONNYBROOK SCOUTS

February and March has been a busy period for the local scouting groups with trips to the mountains, adventures at sea and of course – local St. Patrick’s Day Parades.

The Orion Beavers learned to climb walls at the nearby rock climbing wall at UCD at which they were naturals with “every Beaver reaching their own personal peak,” according to Dennis Markey.

They put this practice to good use climbing Killiney Hill in Dalkey, earning some hot chocolate and ice-cream. The real thrill of their recent events was when the young beavers were informed that the Gardaí would be stopping traffic for their march in the local St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Donnybrook.

The rest of the scouting organisations in the Donnybrook area had similarly auspicious events for St. Patrick’s Day. The Venturer Scouts held a bake sale for local residents to fund their trip to Portugal. The event is one of the most popular in the scouting calendar and this year was no exception. After the march, the scouts returned to the Scout Den, where they awarded many adult members for between five and 25 years of service. Afterwards, there was a fry-up, organised by the Rovers.

Asides from St. Patrick’s Day celebrations, the Aurora campsite is being refurbished, with a new toilet-block being installed. In addition, there will be a ‘hammock hotel’. A new flag pole was built at the Donnybrook site also.

In addition, Donnybrook Scouts wish to offer their congratulations to Scout Leader Erika, who has given birth to her first child as well as to her husband former Scout Leader Eoghan.

The Scouts have completed a four-week emergency first-aid course.

They are now studying orienteering, which will culminate in a big building project in Aurora over Easter.

They will be heading to the International Jamboree in Denmark this summer and have been in touch with Danish and Icelandic scout groups, with whom they will be camping. Additionally, the Rovers have been to Romania with 22 members going in total.

The Donnybrook Scouts are looking to organise a summer campaign to clean-up the river Dodder with the Dodder Action and the Donnybrook Youth Club. In addition, some rovers are working with Darkness into Light to raise awareness and funds for the charity.

1ST PORT OF DUBLIN SEA SCOUTS – RINGSEND

The Ringsend scouts were very busy this past month. The Beavers went to a forest and began their first studies into orienteering. The Ringsend Sea Scouts headed to a forest where they began their training in orienteering. The Cubs headed to Three Rock Mountain and hiked in sub-zero temperatures “putting into practice what they had learned about the correct equipment and preparation for hillwalking,” according to Steven Cull.

Back on the water, the Sea Scouts also engaged in rowing, thanks to East Wall Watersports, who gave them equipment and sent out instructors.

Finally, Cllr. Dermot Lacey would like to state that he is completing a history of the 3rd/40th/41st (Donnybrook, Sacred Heart) Scout Unit to mark its 90th anniversary. He would be grateful if local people could share memories or mementos to: dermot.lacey@dublincity.ie.

From top to bottom: 1st Port of Dublin Sea Scouts (Ringsend). Photo by Steven Cull.

Orion Beavers cook up! Photo by Dennis Markey.

Donnybrook Rover scouts in Romania.

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CHARITY AND VOLUNTEERING

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n Jessica Ellis ocal preparations are being made for the first ever Pieta House Darkness into Light walk in Ringsend. The walk is to raise funds for the suicide and self-harm prevention centre.

The 5km walk will take place at 4.15am on Saturday 6th May from Clanna Gael GAA club on Sean Moore Road, taking participants on a loop before finishing back at the same venue. A time of one hour and fifteen minutes has been allotted for the walk.

NewsFour spoke to Jennifer Betts, a member of the Darkness into Light committee about why the popular walk that takes place in Phoenix park and Marlay Park has come to Ringsend: “I’ve been in contact with Pieta through fundraising for a few years now. They asked me to be on a committee for Darkness into Light and I thought what better committee to be on than a local one? We saw a real need for it in the community and some people suggested it on social media. It’s a subject close to my heart, a lot of families in the area have been affected by suicide, including mine, it’s definitely touched the community.

“While it’s great raising money, it’s the awareness that is important, it lets people know they have somewhere to go. I’ve done the walk in Phoenix Park and so has Chris Andrews, a fellow member of the committee. It’s very sad in the sense that there are a lot of people walking with photographs of their fathers, their sisters and their mothers but it is also very uplifting, you feel like you’re doing something good, like you’re contributing to finding a solution to the problem.”

Sueann Moore, Secretary of Communications for the committee, explains what has been organised so far for the walk: “A Tree of Hope was planted on Sat-

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Darkness into Light goes local

urday March 25th in Ringsend near the East link Bridge. The tree will be there to allow the community to remember those who have been lost to suicide or are suffering with depression.

Electric Ireland are sponsoring tea lights, so people can bring them along the route and place them at the Tree of Hope if they wish. Thanks to Anthony James

O’Reardon for organising this with Noeleen Fulham. We’re hoping that some of the local schools will get involved to provide art installations along the route, similar to what they did at the Marlay Park walk, with themes such as positivity and endurance. Some choirs have been contacted, the Sandymount Choir are already involved.

There is also a banner of hope that people can put their signatures on or write the name of a loved one who has been affected by suicide or mental health.”

Registration is now open on the Pieta House website for anyone who wants to take part.

The fee is €20 with discounts for students, seniors and unemployed and it includes the offi-

cial yellow Pieta House t-shirt that walkers are required to wear. You can also register on the night, for any latecomers.

Above: A previous Darkness into Light event at Phoenix Park.

Below; The route map of the walk.

Images courtesy of Pieta House.

Volunteers, refreshment vendors and corporate sponsors needed

There is a need for approximately 100 volunteers such as water marshalls, stewards, first aid personnel and litter wardens. The Order of Malta will be the official first-aid suppliers and both rowing clubs from Ringsend have offered to marshall the water at Grand Canal Dock.

If you would like to volunteer or if you are a local business and want to provide sponsorship or refreshments at Clanna Gael please email: Jenniferbetts01@gmail.com or chrisandrews64@gmail. com for further details.

Sean Moore Community Awards 2017

orking with our sponsor, the Aviva Stadium, and our media partner News Four, we are delighted to confirm that the Sean Moore Community Awards – first established during the 1988 Dublin Millennium – will again be presented in May 2017, at a ceremony in Clanna Gael Fontenoy, Ringsend.

The Awards for “exceptional community service” were inaugurated to honour the memory of the late Sean Moore, former Dáil Deputy, Minister of State and Lord Mayor of Dublin, who represented the area with distinction for so long.

The Awards are open to any person, or organisa-

tion, who have made an exceptional contribution to the Community. It is adjudicated on by an independent panel of judges and will be presented at an Awards evening later this year.

We invite you or your organisation to consider putting forward a nomination outlining the reasons why your nominee should receive an award. There will be a number of awards presented.

As always, we do not want to limit the criteria involved and therefore do not set a prescriptive account as to why somebody should be nominated. It could be a good neighbour, a long-serving youth, community, or residents’ association leader. The person can be young

or old, man or woman. You, the community, determine that.

Please send your nominees to the following no later than Friday 28th April 2017 to: The Chairperson, Panel of Judges, Sean Moore Community Awards, c/o News Four, 13A Fitzwilliam Street, Ringsend, Dublin 4 Thank you for your cooperation and I hope to meet you at the awards Ceremony.

Dermot Lacey – Secretary

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SPORTS AND LITERATURE

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of rugby, they often offer him advice and a perspective from a long time ago. Generally, the ghosts are very positive figures.

Asked why there are ghosts, he explained that he didn’t know whether there were or weren’t ghosts, but it was a matter of what the reader wished to believe on the matter.

Perhaps some explanation of their presence is Siggins’s keen interest in history and indeed in historical accuracy. He researches the ghosts who haunt his books and is keen to portray them as accurately as the story will allow.

Sporting accuracy also matters to Siggins. There is much detail about rugby and as the books progressed the author explains the technical aspects of the game to his readers in a

non-complex way. He said the book is aimed at rugby fans and those new to the sport alike, and that the book is enjoyable to read as part of a series, as well as being capable of standing alone.

Without giving too much away, he stated that, “there is always a small mystery in the books.” Indeed, the intrigue of the mystery and the ghost’s involvement combine with the rich rugby flavour to make a thoroughly enjoyable read.

Rugby Runner is available to buy at Sandymount Books on the Green and all good bookshops nationwide.

Pictured left: Author Gerard Siggins with his rugby book series.

Photo by Kevin O’Gorman

Crossword Solution for Feb/March 2017

ACROSS 1) St Valentine, 6) Rug, 8) Receptacle, 9) Ogre, 10) Amp, 11) Learnt, 12) Gems, 15) Liaise, 16) Trip, 17) Etna, 18) Gopher, 19) Osprey, 20) Stud, 22) Wagons, 24) Coy, 25) Loch, 26) Moon, 27) Discombobulated DOWN: 1) Straightforward, 2) Vacuum, 3) Entomology, 4) Tact, 5) Needles, 6) Regurgitation, 7) Great Grandchild, 13) Supersonic, 14) Cappuccino, 21) Cymru, 23) Skim, 25) Lola

Rugby Runner: A delightful read for a young audience

R

Kevin Mac Sharry ugby Runner is the fifth instalment in a series of children’s books chronicling the career of aspiring rugby star, Eoin Madden. The book is primarily aimed at 9 to 12 year-olds, although other ages may also enjoy it.

The story takes place during the exciting time of the Junior World Cup, the under 16s rugby tournament, and goes into his various adventures with his friends leading up to the competition as Eoin hopes to be picked for the squad.

Eoin is an enthusiastic goodnatured teenager with a major talent for playing rugby. He is humble, constantly stating that, “I only took up rugby three years ago.” Throughout much of the book there are discussions about who will make the junior Leinster team and the various issues surrounding qualification and the outcomes for the teenagers from these n

make-or-break decisions.

Considering the relative intensity of Eoin’s training, it is impressive to see Siggins keep him upbeat and committed: “[Eoin] was still hurting from the tough week he had just had… It had been a great experience.” Eoin is an inspiring character, reassuring his team during a game: “‘Take it easy, lads,’ Eoin called out. ‘We’ve all the time we need.’” This explains why the character is popular with young readers.

“There is always a small mystery in the books.”

Siggins talked about the background to the character: “I read my little fellah bedtime stories. He had to have a story before he went to bed. Y’know I’d be putting him to bed at eight o’clock and I’d still be there at ten. I used to be tell-

ing him long, convoluted ones to get him to go to sleep. That’s where the idea of Eoin came from. It stuck in my head.” He wanted to write “a very Irish, very Dublin book. A book for Irish kids. There are no books in the genre for Irish kids. That was a problem with my little fellah when he was growing up.”

With the first book he said he sort of wrote it for himself and his son, Billy. However, this changed when he started to visit schools and began to meet his readers. “Kids will tell you what they like about your book and what they don’t like,” said Siggins. I’ve a few pen pals and I always write back to them.

To date, he has delivered 100 talks, mostly in rugby schools in Dublin but also Galway..

An intriguing element of the books is the fact that Eoin can see ghosts. Although these ghosts are very friendly and have strong interest in the sport

A Monument to Flowers

by Kevin Mac Sharry

Soft spoken like the white of a lily as its petals are strewn by the wind.

Kisses that burst to blossom from the blood, so sweet and organic.

These tidy, tiny little moments Whenceforth we make such monuments; Great oaks and cedars.

As a bee taking sweet honey from the flower Pollinates another letting the seed grow inside; A herald of love.

A beehive to his queen.

When we gaze upon a rose.

We see what sweet moments would live in fate.

We grow our dreams with careful practice.

We never see the thorn before we grasp it.

DCC NEWS

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APRIL / MAY 2017

DCC NOTES Compiled by Kevin Mac Sharry

N

ewsFour bring you main points of two meetings, in February and March, of the South East Area Committee that have occurred since last issue. These committee meetings are the public forum where your local representatives give voice to the community’s concerns that have been reported to them.

The main details emerging relevant to the Dublin 4 area are reported below.

Cllr. Frank Kennedy requested that a pedestrian crossing be installed at the top of Marlborough Road so that pedestrians, especially school children, can cross from one side of Sandford Road to the other. The executive stated that it would be looked into by the Traffic Advisory group and that he would be informed “in due course”.

Cllr. Claire Byrne asked the manager about how frequently the containers for the strategic supply of sandbags along Sandymount Strand are used each year.

It was clarified that the containers on Sandymount Strand are stocked with sandbags for use by the residents when a high tide or low tide may threaten the properties. It was further stated that “it is prudent” to have them in place for residents.

Cllr. Mannix Flynn requested the Area Manager for a full report on the continuing anti-social behaviour at Ringsend Park.

He also inquired as to what ef-

forts were being made to resolve this issue by DCC. Finally, he asked about the progress of seat removal from the covered-in seating area, as was agreed with the Parks Department.

He was informed that the Ringsend Irishtown Community Safety Forum “meets quarterly to address issues of community safety in the area.” Efforts to resolve this through the committee involve proposals regarding the seating area known as the “teen zone”, implementing the Local Environment Improvement Plan (LEIP) in relation to the park.

The area continues to be patrolled by An Garda Síochána.

Members of the Safety Forum include representation from DCC South East Area Office, DCC Parks Services, An Garda Síochána, Cllr Dermot Lacey and local community and sports organisation reps.

On behalf of the councillors, Cllr Lacey requested that the possibility of Dodder Action Group being given the old premises of the waste depot at the end of Pembroke Cottages as a storage area for their Dodder cleaning equipment be examined and that the group be met with to discuss this. The council executive stated that they would examine the proposals among others.

Cllr Lacey also inquired whether there were any plans to place “planters” such as boulders, nest boxes or similar along

the Dodder between Ballsbridge and the Dart line. This was due to the area looking “very sterile and bleak.” In reply, it was stated that the building works that are happening nearby will continue and “invasive species” will be dealt with, while efforts will be made to aid aquatic life.

However, “there is no scope for greening here” according to the council executive.

Cllr Kennedy stated that the committee had resolved to write to the National Transport Agency (NTA) to ask when it intends to release information on the public consultation process for the NTA scheme for the Sandymount, Merrion, Blackrock Corridor and Merrion Gates proposal. The executive members stated that if it was agreed by the committee, then the South East Area Office would write to the NTA. Cllr Byrne put forward the motion that this committee would support members of North Port Dwellers’ Association and other local residents in their complaints regarding “the breaches of permitted working hours” in the Docklands area. DCC replied that it was monitoring these sites and that in exceptional circumstances approval may be given for extended working hours. These requests are assessed by the Planning Department. DCC is currently reviewing these working protocols in the SDZ zone. A draft protocol

is being developed and will be issued to all interested parties.

Once comments have been received, a finalised version will be released.

Cllr Andrews recommended that the committee write to the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Simon Coveney, “to express the dismay and disappointment that Ringsend has no community representation on the newly formed Docklands Oversight and Consultative Forum” (DOCF).

The executive explained that a number of applications were

considered but due to limited places it was not possible to appoint someone from Ringsend.

Appointments are made every three years and it is intended to change the makeup of the committee in 2020. In addition, councillors Dermot Lacey and Claire Byrne have suggested a sub-committee of the DOCF that would assist the DOCF and which would contain a representative from Ringsend.

Above: Sandymount Strand.

Below: Ringsend Park.

Photos by Kevin O’Gorman.

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R ESET ,

W

APRIL / MAY 2017

REFRESH , RE - ENERGIZE

Jaclyn Doyle e’re nearly there.

Out of the dark, cold nights and into the longer, warmer evenings and earlier sunrises. Let’s face it, winter is not easy. It’s often cold, windy, rainy and dark.

Naturally, this makes us more tired and less energetic and this is hard to fight sometimes.

These feelings of lethargy and low energy can also lead us to over-eat our favourite comfort foods and be less active than normal.

Coming into Spring is a great way to refresh and ‘spring clean’ our diets. When we are trying to reset our diets in any way, it is essential to take it in small steps. So often people try and overhaul their diets overnight, which can lead to binging, discouragement and sometimes added weight gain.

Don’t just spring clean your homes this year, read on for some small changes you can do to feel refreshed and energized coming into spring! n

NUTRITION

Eliminating Dairy The dairy debate has been an on-going discussion for quite some time. With low-fat, nonfat, full-fat milks available and countless dairy-free options, it is hard to decipher what is good for us and what isn’t. Dairy is highly inflammatory and is actually one of the most inflammatory foods in the modern diet, apart from gluten.

High consumption of dairy

can also cause digestion issues, weight-gain and bloating.

When eliminating dairy, there are a ton of dairy-free options to choose from. Almond milk is becoming more mainstream in cafes and can be found at most grocery stores. Always make sure that it is an unsweetened version, though, otherwise you will be consuming added and unwanted sugar.

I find that cashew milk is my favourite dairy-free option because it is so simple to make.

Also, when you make anything from scratch you know exactly what is in it. Check out the culinary corner for my cashew milk recipe.

Incorporating green smoothies daily Green smoothies are a great way to get large amounts of greens in quickly. They are so nutrient-dense that we get an influx of vitamins and minerals into our bloodstream in a short amount of time. There are green smoothies out there that can also be unhealthy, though, if purchased store-bought with unwanted ingredients in them (watch out for apple juice or orange juice from concentrate).

Low-sugar green smoothies are easily digestible, can reduce cravings and are extremely beneficial for weight loss.

Having a green smoothie in the morning in addition to some protein will fuel your body for the morning and help you feel

Cashew Milk 1 cup cashews soaked 4 cups filtered water Teaspoon cinnamon (optional) Soak the cashews for 3-4 hours or over night Rinse and drain cashews.

Blend on high with 4 cups filtered water and cinnamon.

Store in a glass jar or mason jar for up to 3-4 days.

T HE C ULINARY C ORNER

Low sugar green smoothie 1 cup unsweetened almond milk or coconut milk or cashew milk 1 cup spinach Half a cup of frozen pineapple 1 tablespoon chia seeds 1 tablespoon spirulina Blend on high and enjoy!

energized and refreshed for the day. Check out the culinary corner for a low sugar, nutrient dense green smoothie recipe.

Eliminating processed foods Eating a diet consisting of real foods means getting rid of the over-processed foods and instead, eating a diet that is rich in nutrients including fruits, vegetables, good quality meats and fish, some whole grains and good carbohydrates.

It doesn’t have to be over-complicated but eating real food does take some preparation.

For example, instead of reaching for the frozen pizzas or microwaveable meals, make a healthier version. Grab a thin crust (option for gluten) pizza crust, top with fresh or homemade tomato sauce and load up with veggies. This version will not only be healthier but by managing the ingredients, it won’t leave you feeling bloated or lethargic afterwards.

Jaclyn Doyle is a certified nutritional therapist and helps clients change their diets and lifestyle with personalized nutrition plans. She realizes that everyone is different and individuals need a specific and personalized nutrition plan to achieve their goals. Please contact Jaclyn Doyle on info@healthistic. com or visit her blog at healthistic.com.

Images courtesy of Jaclyn Doyle.

PAGE 35

THE NEWSFOUR CROSSWORD COMPILED BY GEMMA BYRNE

Name:…………………………… Telephone:…………………

Address:…………………………………………………………

Prize of €25 book token. Post entries to NewsFour, 13A Fitzwilliam Street, Ringsend, Dublin 4 (Above Clyne’s Butchers) by 17th May 2017. The winner of our February/March 2017 crossword competition is Samantha Sievers, Sandymount.

ACROSS: 1) Bringer of chocolate eggs? (6, 5) 6) This gets hot and cross around Easter time? (3) 8) Spanish exclamation (3) 9) Annie Lennox & Dave Stewart’s synth duo (10) 12) The importance of being sincere? (7) 13) Close but no cigar (4, 4) 14) Cosy place for your garden flowers? (3) 15) Prickly bush (5) 16) Dilemma (8) 17) Stern (3) 19) Buckets (5) 21) Prepared (5) 22) Morning moisture (3) 23) Splurge, binge (5) 24) Mandela joined this political party in 1943 (1.1.1) 25) Blood vessel (3) 27) Sheltered side (3) 28) A female sheep (3) 30) Completely (7) 31) Paintings of the undressed (5) 32) Having human characteristics (15) DOWN: 1) Nail file (5, 5) 2) Abandon a lock of hair on this shoreline? (6) 3) Activities outside of the normal lesson plan (15) 4) Essential (9) 5) A rapper’s hello (2) 6) Heirs (13) 7) Chin wag (6) 10) Briefly (11) 11) Air regiment of the British Army (1.1.1) 15) Built a road around (a town) (8) 18) Scupper (6) 20) Particular (8) 25) Vitriol or poison (5) 26) Sicily’s active volcano (4) 29) Shed tears (4)

SOCCER HISTORY

PAGE 36

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APRIL / MAY 2017

Eddie Gannon: a joy to watch E Gavan Bergin ddie Gannon was born in 1921 and grew up in Pearse House flats on Pearse Street. He was football mad and became known as ‘a good little player’.

When he left school at fifteen, he worked at the Hammond Lane foundry and played as a forward for the foundry works team.

When he turned eighteen, he got a break and signed for Shelbourne in 1940. Even with his obvious talent, Gannon wasn’t ready for the Shelbourne team and he was sent on loan to the junior league club, Drumcondra Distillery.

With Distillery, Gannon began playing in midfield instead of up front, and the change in position was the making of him as a player. His excellent play helped Distillery win the 1942 Leinster Senior Cup final.

Gannon returned to Shelbourne for the 1942/43 season and became a regular player in the first team. In his second season, he was a star for the Reds, as they won the League of Ireland in thrilling style by beating Shamrock Rovers 5-3 in the deciding game of the championship.

A report about the winning team praised Gannon as “the personification of a modern midfield player, his boundless energy and tremendous enthusiasm making n

him an ideal link between defence and attack.”

Gannon’s talent attracted attention from clubs across the Irish Sea and he was signed by Notts County in July 1946. He settled in to English football quickly, and his committed and consistent style of play made him a club favourite.

He spent two and a half years with County, playing 107 league games, before leaving the club in March 1949. On his departure, the Nottingham Evening Post called Gannon “one of the best who ever played for County.” That’s not bad praise, coming from the oldest professional football club in the world.

Sheffield Wednesday bought Gannon for £15,000, a big fee but it proved to be well worth it.

Wednesday was a big club with a proud tradition of success, but they had been stuck in Division Two for twelve seasons until Gannon arrived.

During the 1949/50 season Gannon played 40 league games for Sheffield Wednesday, who won promotion to Division One, and he was brilliant throughout.

Good as he was, the 1950/51 season ended with relegation back to the second division. This time, their stay there was a short one. In the 1951/52 season Gannon played extremely well for

Wednesday and they won the Division Two championship. It was the club’s first trophy in 22 years.

In 1948, Gannon won his first international cap for the Republic of Ireland, in a loss against Switzerland. The Irish Independent reported that he “gave Ireland’s forwards sufficient of the ball to win the match.” He played in each of Ireland’s next four matches. His first win in a green shirt came when the highly-rated Portugal were beaten 1-0 at Dalymount Park in May 1949. The Irish Independent praised his playmaking skills which “kept Ireland on the offensive all the time” against the Portuguese.

The victory gave the Irish some grounds for optimism regarding their attempt to qualify for the 1950 World Cup. However, Ireland lost their first two qualifying matches, against Sweden and Spain, and in September, 1949 they faced into their next qualifier, against Finland with no reasonable expectation of success.

Ireland beat Finland, cleanly and comprehensively, scoring three and conceding none. Gannon’s contribution to the game was noted. The archive praised how he “covered an amazing amount of ground.” History was made that day – it was the Republic of Ireland’s first-ever win in a World Cup qualifying match.

It was the first step on a long, long road into the future, to the football fields of Europe, America and Asia. All the famous Irish football nights in Stuttgart, Genoa and New Jersey held echoes of that long ago, almost forgotten, win against Finland.

After beating the Finns, things were looking up for Ireland.

Qualification was still possible but on account of Gannon’s value to Sheffield Wednesday, they often refused to release him for Ireland duty. While the Finland match had been his sixth consecutive appearance for Ireland, he did not play in the last two World Cup qualifiers. Ireland failed to qualify.

Subsequently, while playing thirty or forty matches a season for Sheffield Wednesday, Gannon was consistently absent from the Ireland team. He played only three internationals over the next three years, before being recalled to the Ireland team during the 1954 World Cup qualifying campaign. His first two games back were Ireland’s win against Luxembourg in Dublin in October 1953 and the loss in Paris against France that November.

That result finished off Ireland’s chances of qualifying for the ‘54 World Cup and, at the age of 33, Gannon would not have another chance to play at a World

Cup tournament. He played three more games for Ireland after the France match, gaining rave press notices in this last phase of his international career. In Ireland’s win against Norway in November ‘54, Gannon was “right on top in the middle of the field, playing a stream of passes and keeping the forwards pinned down,” according to the Irish Times.

In May 1955, Gannon played his last match for Ireland in Hamburg against the world champions, West Germany. He was 34 at the time, but gave a typically excellent and energetic performance which helped keep Ireland in the game. He was back at Shelbourne by then, having played his last game for Sheffield Wednesday in February 1955.

After nine seasons and 311 league games in England, he was ready to go home. He played two more seasons with ‘Shels’, before retiring in 1957 as a hero to football fans in England and Ireland.

One of those, a long-time Shelbourne supporter, said: “Eddie Gannon was the best trapper of a ball in the world, I can see it now, a ball would be in the air and he’d just stick his foot up and whip it down. He was a joy to watch.”

Pictured above: Notts County FC 1946/47. Eddie Gannon is sixth from left in the middle row.

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APRIL / MAY 2017

SPORTING ISSUES

PAGE 37

Protests at Shelbourne Park over Harold’s Cross closure

T

Paul Carton he bunny has stopped running at Shelbourne Greyhound Stadium and for those who made reservations, there are no dogs racing but for the ones shown on televisions inside.

For the last eight weeks, a nationwide boycott of the stadium is now in place by greyhound breeders and trainers in response to Bord na gCon’s (BnaC) decision to close Harold’s Cross with the intention of selling the land to pay off its debts of €22m.

Since the immediate closure of Harold’s Cross on February 13th of this year, there has been no dog racing at Shelbourne and protesters have been picketing on each of the four race nights per week that BnaC hoped to hold there in order to transfer the racing from Harold’s Cross.

BnaC were advised to sell the Harold’s Cross land by the Joint Committee on Agriculture, Food and Marine after a study into the industry was carried out by Indecon Consultants, commissioned by the Dept of Agriculture, when alarm bells started ringing on the increase in debt that BnaC has accrued.

The circumstances that have resulted in BnaC closing Harolds Cross and building up a debt of €22m have outraged the Dublin Greyhound Owners and Breeders Association (DGOBA) and their countrywide counterparts. Their n

representatives have been picketing outside the track on South Lotts Road every race night since Harold’s Cross was closed to the public.

NewsFour had the opportunity to speak with these protestors, who included Alan Redmond, the director of Harold’s Cross: “Harold’s Cross is owned by the Dublin Greyhound Sports Association and BnaC have no authority to close it down. It was down to a vote and the chairman, Jim O’Dwyer, had the casting vote to bring it to five votes to four [in favour of closing it].”

The story of how the debt accrued and led to the closing of Harold’s Cross goes back to decisions regarding Limerick greyhound racing. In 2008, BnaC sought to move greyhound racing operations from the Markets Field to the former horse racing track at Greenpark. According to a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General since, the project approval was given the go-ahead without the benefit of a capital project appraisal.

Before the Greenpark site was agreed, BnaC purchased a 16-acre site in Meelick, Co Clare in 2005.

The total cost came to €1.3m, which included costs incurred for planning and professionals. However, the project was terminated because they could not provide proper public access to the proposed stadium. This site is still owned by BnaC.

The 11.5-acre site at Greenpark in Limerick was bought for €3.4m in 2008 and the development and design of the stadium on the site brought the bill €2m over its allocated budget of €17.8m.

The exact breakdown of development costs at Greenpark are yet to be established.

An appeal has been put forward to the Office of the Information Commissioner to see if it is information free to the public but what is claimed by some protesters is that there were unwritten agreements or ‘gentlemen’s agreements’ between the sellers of Greenpark, The Limerick Racecourse Company, and BnaC for work that involved raising the marsh to allow proper drainage. This agreement broke down and BnaC had to pay for this work too.

BnaC hoped to recoup this money by the sale of assets but so far they have only being able to make €1.5m from the sale of its old greyhound track, The Market Field, which was sold to Limerick FC and a sale agreed on its HQ office space in Limerick city.

BnaC stated that the reason for the investment in the stadium at Limerick was because of the high number of greyhound owners in that county and that the nearby new Cork greyhound stadium profits indicated it to be worth building.

In 2008 the CEO Adrian Neilan and BnaC chairman, Dick O’Sullivan, sat in front of the

Dáil’s public spending watchdog, the Public Accounts Committee, and had to answer to controversy relating to a scathing report by the Comptroller and Auditor General, about how they managed public money. By 2010 BnaC had spent €23m on this project.

The same Comptroller and Auditor General’s report stated: “Had better analysis and more soundly based assumptions been used, it is likely that the analysis would have indicated that the development of the Limerick stadium was, at best, a marginal commercial proposition.”

The Limerick track has fallen short of its projected profits and has left BnaC in a precarious financial position. This led to the decision to sell off Harold’s Cross stadium, although this stadium was turning an annual profit. The knock-on effects have resulted in DGOBA maintaining their protest outside Shelbourne Park until Harold’s Cross is reopened.

Attempts to resolve the situation have come at a slow pace, according to DGOBA. In the fifth week of the boycott, DGOBA was invited to meet with Minister of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Andrew Doyle, to discuss if anything could be done to help both sides meet some agreement.

On the outcome of this meeting, DGOBA Secretary, Mick O‘Keefe told NewsFour: “They listened and that’s it, they’ve done nothing for us, we are still going

to protest until Harold’s Cross is opened up again.”

Recently, mediator Kieran Mulvey, the State’s previous senior industrial relations troubleshooter, was brought in to allow both sides to talk. “It was us in one room and the Irish Greyhound Board in the other, we gave them a proposal of how Harold’s Cross, a profitmaking stadium, could be saved and they were given 24 hours to look over it and they came back with the proposal of giving us two nights a week in Shelbourne which we are not happy with,” said O’Keefe.

Speaking with the manager of Shelbourne Greyhound Stadium, Patrick Flynn, on how the picket is impacting the local track, he said, “We’re caught in the middle of everything, we’ve lost some highly regarded staff already and we can’t actually guarantee our part-time staff if there are shifts available at the moment, but we are still honouring our reservations.”

The most recent development took place at a meeting in Thurles on Sunday 2nd April of greyhound breeders and trainers who are seeking the reopening of Harold’s Cross, in addition to voting no confidence in the Board and in BnaC chairman Phil Meaney.

Above: The lively and wellattended meeting in Thurles on Sunday 2nd April.

Photo by Yvonne Harrington.

SPORT

PAGE 38

Railway Union News

n

David Carroll

Railway Men’s Indoor team bring home silver from Europe!

As 2016 national champions, Railway’s Indoor Hockey team had to make a very long journey to Alanya in Turkey to compete in the Indoor Club Challenge competition during February but returned home having achieved second place. This success should ensure that 2017 Irish winners, Three Rock Rovers will play in a higher division next year.

In addition to taking second place, team captain Kenny Carroll won the Player of the Tournament trophy and Stephen O’Keeffe was voted the outstanding goalkeeper.

Railway Union Ladies in Hockey team in seventh heaven!

Railway Union won their fourth Jacqui Potter Cup title since 2011 with an easy win over UCD, winning out 7-0. The Leinster hockey final was played on St. Patrick’s Day at Grange Road, Rathfarnham.

UCD had been unbeaten in all competitions this season, but they never looked in the running from the moment Anna-May Whelan

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volleyed home from mid-circle in the eighth minute.

Zara Delany added with a pair of clever deflections to build a 30 lead before half-time. The first came from Sarah Canning’s cross from left wing, the second from Hannah de Burgh Whyte’s right wing ball into the centre The second half provided little respite for UCD. Former international Emma Smyth slammed home in the first minute of the second half after Michelle Carey’s run into the circle had been halted at the near post.

Delany then provided a piece of class for the fifth, to celebrate her hat-trick, providing a strong pickup down the left wing, beating her marker with strength and then flicking in at the near post.

Kate Dillon put away another goal before Michelle Carey closed out the win with a brave tap in, guiding home a head-high reverse-stick shot from Smyth.

Unfortunately, the Under-16 team competing in the Jacqui Potter Junior Final were narrowly beaten by Muckross HC so the Leinster double was not achieved on this occasion!

Railway Ladies Cup Success The good times continued at Belfield on Sunday March 26th when Railway Ladies 2nd XI won the Irish Junior Cup Final against local rivals Pembroke Wander-

APRIL / MAY 2017

ers. Goals from Ruth Clifford and Niamh Shaw gave Railway a 2-0 victory to bring the trophy back to Park Avenue.

Clockwise from top left: Railway Men’s Indoor team: S. O’Keeffe, K. Carroll, A. van As, F. Kelly, M. Fulham, E. MacArthur, A. Rooney, T. Kritzinger, B. Thompson.

Kenny Carroll, Player of Tournament and Stephen O’Keeffe, goalkeeper of Tournament The Under-16 team – narrowly beaten by Muckross HC Railway Union Senior Ladies Hockey team and coaches: G. O’Flanagan, Z. Delany, J. O’Halloran, K. Fearon, K. Orr, A.-M. Whelan, E. Smyth, E. Lucey, H. de Burgh Whyte, N. Carey, S. Dooley, O. Fox, S. Canning, M. Carey, N. Heisterkamp, G. McLoughlin.

Goalscorers for Railway Union: Z. Delany 3, A.-M. Whelan, K. Dillon, M. Carey, E. Smyth.

Railway Ladies 2nd XI who won the Irish Junior Cup Final against Pembroke Wanderers.

Photos by Tristan Taz Stedham.

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n Felix O’Regan

APRIL / MAY 2017

e welcomed a delegation of public and community representatives to the club on a Saturday morning recently. They took the opportunity to see plenty of training activity in the academy and out on the pitches; but also to hear how the club is contributing in a myriad of ways to the welfare of the communities in its hinterland – particularly in Ringsend, Irishtown, Sandymount and Ballsbridge.

They learned how the club plays a key role in sustaining the physical and mental well-being of its communities through the provision of recreational activities for young boys and girls, right through to adulthood.

They also learned how the club provides a focal point for many diverse community activities, interest groups and charities, which is reflected in the multiplicity of social and cultural events that populate our events calendar.

The community spirit is also reflected in the way in which many of the club’s juvenile players help with training the very young participants in our academy on Saturday mornings. They do this as part of their Gaisce (achievement) personal development programme. This gives them the satisfaction of working with the very young and helping them to develop, while the kids themselves learn from the experience of the older players.

GAA

Clanna Gael Fontenoy supporting the community in many ways

Supporting Pieta House The club is delighted to facilitate the Pieta House – Darkness Into Light walk which will take place on the morning of Saturday May 6th. Some 2,000 people are expected to participate in the walk, which will start around 4.30am at the clubhouse, make its way through Irishtown, Ringsend and Pearse Street, across the Liffey and back via the East Link to the clubhouse a couple of hours later.

Also, large numbers of Clanns volunteers will be on hand to support the event in various ways – from helping with all the preparations on the Friday evening/ night to stewarding the walk it-

self on the Saturday morning and cleaning up after the event.

Darkness Into Light is the main fundraising activity for Pieta House, a charity which raises awareness of self-harm and suicide and enables them to provide life-saving support to people in need.

Community development The proposed development of the Poolbeg West peninsula and in particular the inclusion of a very significant residential element is most welcome. This area can and should be developed in a manner that preserves and augments the best of what exists at present, while providing the essential components of a sustainable community that can thrive for years to come.

The creative use of green areas, the development of suitable recreational

facilities and effective planning to address traffic congestion are among the factors that can contribute to this end.

A trip to the Park While those participating in the Pieta House – Darkness Into Light will cross the Liffey in May, another and different crossing took place recently when the club witnessed a mass exodus.

Some 165 children and 90 adults made the trip to Croke Park to see the Dublin hurlers and footballers in action in the National League. Youngsters from teams ranging from the U-7s right up to the U-15s travelled. An exodus on this scale had not been seen before with three double decker buses ferrying the supporters to see the best of talent in action.

Great credit is due to all the coaches and parents who were on hand to look after the youngsters.

All were rewarded with a very encouraging display from the Dublin hurlers and a dominant one from the footballers.

PAGE 39 Representing Dublin Such has been the growth and success of the club over recent years that we now have players from virtually all age-group levels, male and female, involved in Dublin development squads and teams.

A number of our female players have of late been ‘flying the flag’ with particular distinction. Kate McKenna, Rachael Byrne and Rebecca McDonnell have been involved with the Dublin senior ladies team, with Rebecca receiving the ‘player of the match’ accolade in national league fixtures.

Meanwhile, three of our younger girls have been acquitting themselves very well as part of the Dublin U-14 football team – Lucy Crowe, Ella Darcy and Ali Griffin, with Ali also performing the role of team captain.

Clockwise from top: Supporting the Dubs in Croke Park.

Gaisce Volunteers, left to right: Colm O’Briain, Seamus McCann, Karl Morgan, Conor Hennessy, Kate Benson and Orla Flanagan.

The club entertains community representatives: Left to right, back row: Frank White, Eoin Ryan, Pat Kane, John Daly (Covanta), Councillor Dermot Lacey, Senator Kevin Humphreys, Minister Eoghan Murphy.

Front row: Peter McLoone (Community Gain Fund), Michele O’Briain, Bernard Barron (Club Chairman), Felix O’Regan.

Roger McGrath is missing from photo.

Lucy Crowe, Ali Griffin and Ella Darcy feature with the Dublin U14s Photos courtesy of Roger McGrath, Michele O’Briain and Declan Darcy.

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APRIL / MAY 2017