Council-Funded Football Pitch In The Liberties Closed To Local Sports Clubs:
By: Aidan Crowley:
A full-sized astro-turf football pitch, owned by CBS James’s Street and constructed mainly with money from Dublin City Council (DCC), is currently out-of-bounds to local sports clubs. The pitch is secluded away behind an iron gate, with no sign of any local children playing on it.
The facility, located on Long’s Place, near Marrowbone Lane, was paid for in installments by DCC in 2017 and 2018, amounting to a total of Euros 125,000, according to a recent email sent by the council to local Labour Party Councillor, Darragh Moriarty.
This amount represents most of the total cost of Euros 150,000 to Euros 160,000, with the remainder being covered by an “anonymous benefactor”, according to the email. Considering its majority funding for the facility, DCC has maintained control over who uses it.
According to a DCC spokesperson, there was an initial expectation that the pitch would be made available to local sports clubs. “DCC considers that this pitch should be made available to local sports clubs”, they said.
So far, CBS James’s Street has not responded to queries asking why the football pitch is not currently available for use by local sports clubs and how the situation might be resolved.
The only football facilities currently available in the immediate area, for local children, are a tiny tarmac yard at Basin View and a small, rundown tarmac pitch, located at the Basin Street flats complex.
Local resident, Adam Mulligan, who sometimes goes for a “kickabout” with some of the local children on this makeshift pitch, was very forthright about the lack of proper sports facilities in the immediate area. “Kids in this area basically have nothing in terms of sports facilities”, he said.
Moriarty explained that the lack of proper facilities in the area means local residents are forced to accept what’s available in the council housing stock.
“But these pitches are really only intended for ‘kickabouts’ and are not an adequate replacement for proper sports facilities”, he said.
At present, the only football pitches in the catchment area are located at Basin View flats, behind Vicar Street, in Pimlico, at St Catherine’s Community Centre and at the F2 Centre in Rialto.
DCC has promised to develop a municipal pitch at the former St Teresa’s Gardens site, which would include football facilities. The council is also working on plans for a new full-sized football pitch at Marrowbone Lane. So far, neither of these projects has gone beyond the planning stage.
Local group, Sporting Liberties, which represents the sports clubs of Dublin’s South-West Inner City, has been lobbying for better facilities in the area, for many years. Last year, five local football clubs combined to form the Liberties Football Alliance, with a view to improving football facilities in the catchment area.
According to Damien Farrell, president of the Liberties Football Alliance, this lack of adequate sports facilities has left some children at a loose end. This has resulted in some of them falling into anti-social behaviour and even, on occasions, criminality.
“We haven’t had the facilities for a long time, so you could probably say the worst consequences of not having facilities are manifesting themself in the behaviours of young people in the Dublin 8 area now,” said Farrell.
Moriarty explained that getting more young people in the area involved with organised sport would have a positive impact on social cohesion. This would have the effect of preventing children from going down the path of anti-social and criminal behaviours.
While DCC provided most of the funding for the large astro-turf football pitch at CBS James’s Street, it has never been opened for community access. The only exception is permitting other schools in the locality to use it during school hours, according to Moriarty.
However, DCC managers mooted the idea of permitting community access, recently, during discussions about plans to regenerate the Basin Street flats complex.
At a recent meeting of the DCC Central Area Committee, Moriarty opposed the suggestion to remove the tarmac pitch at the flats as part of the regeneration project.
Gareth Rowan, project manager for the regeneration programme, defended the planned removal. In the process, he listed other planned and existing pitches in the area, including at CBS James’s Street, nearby.
The council “should look at how we can unlock those pitches for Sporting Liberties or Sporting Alliance groups”, Rowan said.
When the plans for the Basin Street flats regeneration project moved from this area committee to a recent monthly meeting of the full council, the thorny issue of the football pitch as a component of that development, arose again.
Local councillors proposed a motion to amend the plans, “in order to provide for a larger enclosed Muti-Use Games Area (MUGA), at least 500-600 square metres in size”. The full council then backed this amended version of the plan.
However, the idea of “unlocking” the CBS James’s Street football pitch, in tandem, has also persisted.
According to Mulligan, the school’s astro-turf football pitch should be open to the whole community. This is in the context where children are already climbing over the perimeter fence and wriggling through the gaps to play on it, anyway, he explained.
Moriarty followed up on the idea with the council by email and received the following reply:
“When the larger pitch was built, funding was not available to install lighting. This obviously limited the usage of the facility,” it said.
“Local access outside of school hours was not a condition of the DCC funding, but there was an expectation that such use would be facilitated, if and when lighting was installed,” it added.
According to the email, the council’s local area office is in favour of installing lighting, “subject to funding”, while opening up the pitch to local sports clubs.
“There is no indication however, following talks with the Principal, that the school supports such a proposal at this time,” the email explained.
Although the school has yet to respond to queries about that issue, Moriarty and Farrell, both said they believe that the school has concerns around the security of the football pitch.
The potential for anti-social and criminal behaviours to take place at this location, if it was opened up outside of school hours, is apparent, according to Moriarty and Farrell.
It’s not clear exactly how this situation might be resolved, but installing floodlights would be a first step, they said.
Perhaps a solution could be found , whereby the school could make an arrangement with an organisation or individual whom they trusted, to act as a keyholder. The pitch could then be accessed by local sports clubs on certain days, at particular times, they added.
Unfortunately, DCC does not have much leverage to persuade the school to work towards such an arrangement.
When the council provided funding for the pitch, it did not stipulate in its agreement with the school that the football pitch should be open for community access, according to the email sent to Moriarty.
In response to a query about this, a council spokesperson said, “There was an expectation that the pitch would be made available to local sports clubs.”
This seems like “almost negligence” that DCC would rely on an expectation that the football pitch han having it in writing, concluded Moriarty.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25075884-103678-dublin-city-council-sports-plan-2024-2029/
