Congratulations to our 3rd Ladies junior team who won the league today ..first year playing together and have won league and championship a lovely mix of young girls and a few Gaelic for Mothers taking the step up .. well done in 2021 to all the players , coaches and management.
The Inter Hurlers also finished off a hugely successful season with a fantastic game against Castleknock which went to extra time and penalties in front of a great home crowd. Congratulations to the players and mentors for a fantastic season of hurling - looking forward to 2022!
A team of Green Schools students from St Finians Community College planted 115 trees beside the Brackenstown Road on Thursday 2nd of December. A huge thank you to the inspirational Orla Farrell from Easy Treesie, Edward Stevenson from the Swords Woodland Association and Councillor Joe Newman. Well done to all for taking care of our future environment. To learn more about Orla’s work @easytreesie @plantfortheplanet_official
By Ken Duffy
2021 was a productive and successful year for Swords Tidy Towns, which in its self is remarkable considering our volunteers had to work through a pandemic to achieve this. Right from the start of the Covid 19 crisis our volunteers wished to continue on working as best they could, by working in pods they were able to achieve this. The crisis actually increased our membership. People who were stuck at home through no fault of their own found they had time on their hands and wanted to do something positive with that time by helping in their community. We have over forty members on our books at present and we are always looking for new members, Swords is a big place and it continues to grow. We linked up in 2021 with numerous Swords groups who wished to contribute by doing litter picking or planting around the town for us. These included the National Learning Network, Youthreach, McVery Trust, St Michaels House, others we have worked with are Prosper Fingal and Anew. Our Chairman sits on the board of directors of both the Fingal Leader Partnership and the Valley Project. We started and completed our Frontline Workers Commemorative Garden opposite the fire brigade station. We have planted flower beds and rockeries down River Mall and along the river towards the Old Schoolhouse. We completed a beautiful wild life mural funded by a grant from Fingal County Council on Brackenstown Rd at the lane entrance to the park. We linked up with the Swords Woodland Association and Fingal County Council on a project to plant 3000 trees. We agreed to take on 23 TY students from Fingal and Swords Community Colleges each Saturday for 20 weeks to help them achieve their Gaisca Medal Awards. Our Rock Garden on the Rathbeale Road a collaboration with Fingal County Council won another International Green Flag Award. We were finalists in this year’s Pakman National Awards, we won a Silver Medal in the National Tidy Towns Competition making that four in a row. A very good year.All of this, everything achieved, is down to the continuing hard work of our members, their love of their town and their ambition to make Swords the best it can be, roll on 2022.
We are still getting there and let’s hope 2022 will bring more great news. At the moment we are still busy building our young athletes to be future black belts ,Poomsae champions , Olympic hopefuls , Taekwondo referees or even trying to fill the kids with confidence and fitness. We help everyone no matter what Taekwondo path they want to follow. Here are some photos of our guys in action and as you will see the first four pictures are of our less advanced students training session while the next six are of when Junsa Taekwondo hosted a training session with Elite Taekwondo. This training session was aimed at the more advanced groups and it was a fantastic training session bringing both styles of Taekwondo together. Junsa Taekwondo classes are very popular so if you are interested in taking up a new sport for any reason please don’t hesitate to contact Master Stuart Russell on 087 7775202 or message our club on Facebook @ Junsa Taekwondo. Happy New to everyone from Junsa Taekwondo.
Lusk Athletic Club would like to wish a very happy and healthy New Year to all our members and families. We are already looking forward to an exciting 2022 events with you and hopefully a lot more “real” events” in 2022.The club are confident that ‘red tape’ issues between Fingal County Council and a local developer will soon be resolved and we will be moving to our own home on a dedicated site in Lusk in the first half of 2022 where we can provide safer and better facilities for all our members to train. Club membership for 2022 is now open. Please go to luskathleticclub.ie for details. Training will resume on Tuesday 11th January for all age groups.Some of the club highlights during a very challenging 2021 included seeing the brilliant Cara McNally twice wearing the green of Ireland in International competition. Lusk AC athletes of all ages from juvenile to senior adults and masters athletes posted some fantastic times at virtual and real events and at all distances. Our dedicated athletes competed at track and field events winning national medals, cross country races, marathons which included a number of fantastic sub 3 hour marathon runs, ultra marathons and mountain races. Lusk AC again ran two very successful Fit4Life programmes during the year for new runners and those returning after a long layoff - check our facebook page for the next one in 2022. Another highlight was that club membership reached 700 members meaning that Lusk AC is now the 2nd largest athletics club in the country! Considering that the club was only reformed in 2009, this is a phenomenal achievement and testament to the dedication and hard work of the club committee and our juvenile and adult coaches who invest so much time into the club.The Lusk AC 4 mile race is set for Sunday the 6th March 2022 and we are eagerly looking forward to putting on a great “Real” event after all the virtual races of the past 18 months. This is the highlight of the club calendar and registration is now open at luskathleticclub.ie and on the Myrunresults website. We hope yo enoy or and photos highlights from 2021
Cllr O’Donoghue would like to extend the warmest and congratulations and thanks to the Dance Sport Ireland team and Ken Farrell on their recent Fingal International Ballroom and Latin American Classic Dance Championships which took place in the National School Community Hall in Lusk. Dancers from five to 75 years of age took to the floor in a display of athleticism, style and elegance and wowed spectators with their renditions of the foxtrot, tango, jive, paso doble, a variety of waltzes and the cha-cha-cha. In a nail-biting finale, the Irish team beat out the European team in the final round of the international team event by 41 points to 40. Cllr O’Donoghue stated, ‘the whole day has been an incredible success, and I would love to thank organisers for all their efforts in bringing the event to Lusk. The school hall is the perfect venue for the championships and credit should be given to principal Paul Comiskey for facilitating the occasion. Hopefully, we can secure events like this for the town into the future and encourage more people in Lusk to get involved in Ballroom dancing.’
In spite of Covid restrictions in 2021, Lusk Community Council embarked on its biggest ever pro-ject on the 4th May with the reopening of construction, the construction of a new Cultural Centre in Lusk. This project is ongoing and we look forward to its completion in May 2022. The comple-tion of Lusk Vision 2030 Plan for Lusk was another pandemic milestone and January 2022 will see the first meeting of the Lusk Vision 2030 Implementation Team, a new cross community group to work on implementing a miriad of projects to improve our town. Let’s also recognise and cele-brate key improvements achieved in 2021. The Fingal County Council programmes delivered a new lighting system in the old graveyard; the restoration of the bandstand on the Green; upgrading the tennis courts in Orlynn Park; footpath upgrades on Church Road / Ministers Road, path and road improvements on Church Road, while Lidl delivered a new retail outlet for the town. These are all very visible improvements, however much work is undertaken that is less visible, the work of the Lusk 2020 Sports Committee being a case in point. The 2020 Sports Committee has contin-ued to work with Fingal County Council throughout 2021 to make further improvements to the phase one Recreational Hub in Lusk, while working to bring the phase two open space in charge from the developer to Fingal County Council. Once in charge the 2020 Sports Committee will be working with Fingal to develop the final Masterplan for the Recreational Hub, taking into account the needs of our schools, our sporting organisations and the public at large. This is the number one priority of the 2020 Sports Committee in 2022 and it will be another exciting project for Lusk.
2022 will be an important year for the next stages in the preparation of the Fingal Development Plan 2023-2029. Please engage in this process. Your input is important.
Lusk Community Council wants to recognise all the voluntary work undertaken by countless vol-unteers across the community, it is very important, as is the work of our Councillors, who seek to make improvements in our town and community. Thank you.
Recently Let’s Play Rush was launched with key events aimed at developing a playful culture in the town. The EU initiative sees an URBACT Transfer Network in Ireland sharing good practice in sustainable urban development between cities and towns, with Rush one of five towns learning best practice from lead city Cork on how to develop play and placemaking actions. As part of the initiative, Rush Library hosted Lego-building sessions for kids aged from 4 – 12 years. Led by Brick4Kidz, the outdoor play sessions paid tribute to the town’s pirate heritage. The event was organised with the help of Rush Community Council and Rush Tidy Towns. Rush Community Centre also sought to help the town’s senior citizens discover their creativity with painting sessions delivered by artist John Carpenter.The events were funded by Creative Ireland and organised by the Let’s Play Rush URBACT Local Group (ULG) whose members are drawn from the Council, Local Councillors, Rush Community Council, Rush Tidy Towns, Fingal LCDC, Fingal CYPSC and Healthy Ireland. Cllr Brian Dennehy, Chair of Rush ULG, said: “Our participation in this URBACT initiative will be a great opportunity to introduce and develop play and placemaking activities in the town. Rush ULG hopes to run a number of events and projects over the next year, bringing play to the fore for people of all ages in Rush and benefiting from the knowledge of our partners in the URBACT network.” Brendan O’Reilly, Chair of Rush Tidy Towns said: “We are very excited to be working with Rush Community Council and Fingal County Council in rolling out this URBACT initiative in Rush through a series of events and projects related to the Playful Paradigm. Our first two events on Saturday 20 November were a great success, with the youth and senior citizens of the town involved.”Aoife Sheridan, Senior Executive Officer, Economic, Enterprise, Tourism and Cultural Development Department, Fingal County Council, said: “The Council is excited to be involved in a second URBACT initiative, with Balbriggan already involved in the Iplace Network. These networks strengthen Fingal’s connections to Europe and provides the Council with an opportunity to learn best practice lessons from its partners. For more information on URBACT go to:urbact.eu/playful-paradigm-0
Significant investment has been secured for Fingal projects at the most recent Dublin Rural LEADER Approvals Meeting. The Dublin Rural LEADER Local Action Group, which oversees the Programme in Dublin, approved €230,748.76 in funding for 5 new projects in Rural Dublin at its November Online Meeting. This brings the total number of projects approved during the LEADER Transition Programme to 15 since it began on April 1st, 2021, with a total value of €543,984.52. The approved projects are in the areas of Economic Development, Rural Environment and Social Inclusion. Fingal LEADER Partnership CEO, Eilish Harrington, welcomed the approval of the 5 projects. “All were excellent projects enhancing services in the rural towns and villages of Fingal. It’s great to see communities benefiting from LEADER funding to help develop and grow their amenities, especially during the difficult times we are all currently in. I would encourage more rural communities and businesses to contact LEADER to avail of the remaining funds during the next 14 months.” Amongst the projects approved for funding are: Balbriggan Meals on Wheels which is approved for €24,063.75 for an outdoor dining area which will be of enormous help to facilitate the provision of meals to their clients in a safe outdoor setting. Donabate Portrane Community Centre CLG which is approved for €24,354.00 for a feasibility study to capture the needs of existing groups that use the facilities to assist and guide them in expanding in line with community needs.Also St Maur’s GAA Club Rush which is approved for €89,154.58 to install rainwater harvesting and irrigation in St Maur’s GAA Club premises and for use on the pitches. The Project will reduce the demand on the public water supply and reduce the volume of water going into the public drainage system. Welcoming the latest funding announcement, the Mayor of Fingal, Cllr. Seána Ó Rodaigh said “I would like to thank the Local Action Group for its support of these Fingal Projects which will enable the continued development of sustainable communities in our rural areas’’.
The Lusk Mens walk and talk group meet at the Hub car park at 7:00pm every Monday for their weekly walk. This is open to all men and it’s an opportunity just get out of the house, have a nice walk, clear the head and have a chat if you wish. You can do it as a once off or every week, no joining necessary, just turn up. This group is organised by Ciaran Russell, so if you want to introduce yourself to him and before long you will find you have made new friends. So why not let any friends or neighbours know about it as new members are alaways welcome