Balbriggan Adult Education are providing a free Irish beginners class in their centre for anyone interested. The class will begin on Wednesday February 2nd at 2pm – 4pm and will run each Wednesday thereafter for 8 weeks. Places are limited due to social distancing in the classroom so please email BalbrigganLibrary@fingal.ie as soon as possible to reserve your place.
There is a phrase I’ve heard which says, ‘There is money in rubbish’. All of us in the Balbriggan\North County Dublin branch of Guide Dogs have proved this over several years, especially over the past two years. Annually our branch puts out this request, ‘If you have any used postage stamps, stamp albums, or coins which are no longer in circulation, please give them to us. We will turn them into Euros and lodge them to the guide dogs account.’ We receive coins from all over the world and old postage stamps. In our guide dog boxes and large collection dogs we find coins from all over the world and from Europe that are no longer legal currency since the Euro came into place. We get paper notes of all sorts of denominations, coins and used stamps from our branch volunteers and friends. The stamps go into a box and over the past two years a total of 41 kgs were accumulated. We also received 13 kgs of old foreign coin and 18 foreign notes. A stamp and coin collector from the UK bought them. We received €610 for 41 kgs of stamps, 13 kgs of old coin and old notes. We actually collected 12 kgs of old Irish coin and 22 different old Irish notes. There were some part or torn euro notes, these and the old Irish notes were brought to the Central Bank of Ireland for converting to Euros. The old Irish coin was sold to a local coin collector for €100. The Central Bank needs old Irish coin sorted in a particular way before they will convert them into Euros for us.We also received sterling coin which came to £165. A branch volunteer took them up North and converted them into sterling notes. These were then converted into €187.93. All money was lodged to the guide dogs’ account.If you have any used postage stamps or old Irish coins or notes or foreign coins or notes, please contact us at 085 7663107 or email GuideDogsBalbriggan@gmail.com Thank you, Tom O’Neill, Guide Dog Owner.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin TD was briefed on the Our Balbriggan Regeneration Plan when he visited the town recently for the official launch of the Irish Institute of Music and Song. During a walk from the Our Balbriggan Hub in St George’s Square to Balbriggan Harbour, the Taoiseach, who was accompanied by Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Darragh O’Brien TD, was shown the sites for several major regeneration projects which have received funding from the Urban Regeneration Development Fund (URDF). Among the projects the Taoiseach was shown was the Heart of Main Street, the one hectare area of natural green space along the Bracken River which, with the help of almost €7m in Urban Regeneration Development funding, is going to be transformed into a Green Corridor linking Millpond Park with the centre of Balbriggan and leading to the Beach and Harbour. The Taoiseach was also taken to Quay Street, the Harbour and the Beach where over €11m of URDF support will transform the area on both sides of the Railway Viaduct. Following the short tour, the Taoiseach said that he was very impressed with the Council’s plans for the town: “I’ve been in Balbriggan before and I must say that I am impressed with the development that is underway here. The Our Balbriggan Regeneration Programme is really exciting and I think will open up the wonderful natural beauty of this area and coastline and the public realm to enhance that.” The Mayor of Fingal, Cllr Seána Ó Rodaigh, said she was delighted to show the Taoiseach around Balbriggan and talk to him about what is planned: “The town is set to be transformed through more than €50 million investment with an ambitious new vision, which will, with the support of all of our stakeholders, realise the town’s full potential.“The Irish Institute of Music and Song will be at the heart of this I have no doubt. The construction of a 400 seat Concert Hall in Balbriggan is significant locally, regionally and nationally..“
First Time author Balbriggan Woman Linda Murray recently launched a children’s book called ‘Dragon Fire and Fairy Dust’ with all the proceeds of it going to Temple St Childrens Hospital.
Linda said, ‘I am a Balbriggan local and started writing during the first Lockdown as I was not an essential worker. I found myself very isolated, being alone all day and missing my working life and social outlet. So I started writing poems and moved onto verse stories which are great fun, because you can really let your imagination run. I post my stories on a public Facebook page- Linda Murray Poetry for Life and I got a lot of encouragement so I decided to get a children’s book together. ‘ Well done Linda !
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.’