Lusk Tidy Town Committee have been busy planting up flower tubs, watering and generally keeping Lusk Tidy despite all the building development.Thank you for your support. “Keep Lusk Tidy. Lusk Tidy Towns Committee have been producing Christmas Cards, Calendars and St Patricks Day cards of our village of Lusk for over 30 years.This year is no different and cards are selling locally at €1 each. These cards have been very popular with our friends and relatives near and far, a lovely reminder of home to many who have left our shores.Thank You to the 2nd year students of Lusk Community College and the students from Loreto School Balbriggan and to everyone who has been involved in litter picking over the years. Thank you all, not forgetting our sponsors and supporters. Please support our cards and have a Happy Healthy Christmas and New Year. Lusk Tidy Towns.

Welgro Produce located in Rush Co Dublin has been selected as the winner of the third Irish Newbie new entrant competition. Welgro established by Shane Halpin, Sean Weldon and Gary Weldon is one of only two commercial cucumber growers in Ireland. Shane Halpin is a local Lusk guy with a farming background, Sean Weldons mother is from Lusk and he attended Lusk National school, Gary Weldon is a Rush local.Shane who has a background in horticulture and mechanics, Sean with an accounting and processing background and Gary who has an agricultural degree share the management responsibilities. The company employing up to 15 people at peak times in the areas of grading/picking, packing and distribution. As with many new entrants across the EU access to land was a major hurdle for these three friends to become established in a strong horticultural area. Leasing the disused glasshouses was the most viable option to get established while maintaining sustainable set-up costs.Welgro has developed relationships with a number of well-known retailers which is instrumental in ensuring a route to market for the cucumbers produced. Speaking following the announcement Shane Halpin said: “We at Welgro are very proud to have won the Newbie award. We as a team have worked very hard over the last year and it is great to get the recognition of Teagasc.” Gordon Peppard Teagasc noted; “it is very exciting to see three young enthusiastic new entrants to agriculture, recognise a gap in the market, devise a business plan and seek out the necessary facilities to make their plan a reality.” The Newbie Network is an EU Horizon 2020 funded project with 10 European partners. Newbie offers a unique platform by bringing together new entrants, successors, advisors, researchers, important regional and national actors and relevant stakeholders in national networks, with the aim of enabling new entrants to successfully establish a sustainable farm business in Europe.

The Christmas lights are up again, thanks to our hard-working LAG team, your generous donations and, most importantly, our three dedicated local electrical contractors, Eamonn from Eamonn Walsh Building and Electrical, Gary from SAGAR Electrical and Mark from TMA Electrical. All of their time was given for free for the benefit of the community and we are, yet again, very grateful. Preparations for our Biodiversity garden continue after meeting some unexpected delays. October and November saw a flurry of Fingal County Council activity around the town, delivering the programme of works. The majority of these were due to our engagement with FCC, and Cllr Robert O’Donoghue’s representations on our behalf. Particularly welcome were the road improvements on Treen Hill, the renovation of the bandstand and the new fencing around the tennis courts in Orlynn Park. We have requested resurfacing of this for inclusion in the next programme of works. We have asked the community for feedback regarding improvements that need to be made around the town. You can get in touch with us at any time at luskactiongroup@gmail.com or 0863017842. Foroige Youth Club will be soon up and running again on Friday evenings! They cannot run this really important service without the help of committed and enthusiastic volunteers. So please consider helping. The more volunteers, the better the service. The better the service, the more users of it, leading to the delivery of badly needed facilities for our youth. Get involved! Contact us at the above email address and we can put you in touch with the organisers. Finally, we would like to wish everyone a very happy, healthy and peaceful Christmas from All in Lusk Action Group.

At the November Area meeting Cllr Rob O’Donoghue tabled a motion regarding the future plans for provision of parking at the Lusk Sports Hub where recently has had issues with parking for patrons of the Hub. Cllr O’Donoghue was advise that discussions had recently taken place between the Chair of the Lusk 2020 group with the two school principals with view to allowing use of their car parking facilities in the evenings.At the meeting the two school Principals have agreed the location of a pedestrian gate and to replace the existing boundary fencing between the Lusk Hub and the schools with procurement of the new gates and fencing being undertaken with the aim of having the infrastructure in place before the end of quarter one of 2022. Cllr O’Donoghue welcomed the report and thanked the 2020 Group stakeholders, the Operations Department of Fingal County Council and the two Principals of the local schools for their quick and decisive actions in formulating a solution to the issue. He stated ‘as the Sports Hub develops, we need to ensure that access for users of the Hub is adequately catered for given the rise in obesity rates and the ever increasing number of volunteers and club members who use the facility on a weekly basis.’

Donabate parkrun returned at the end of September after a long absence due to the pandemic and we celebrated our 6th anniversary in October. There have been regularly attendances of over 150 participants and it’s been fantastic to see everyone enjoying their 5km run, walk or jog as well as catching up with friends for a chat and coffee. We recently purchased a defibrillator which will be available if needed at parkrun each Saturday. This was possible thanks to the generosity of donations made by parkrunners. We are truly grateful for this. We usually need up to 20 volunteers each Saturday to cover all the roles needed for a successful and safe parkrun. Some would say that it’s even more fun volunteering than actually running a parkrun so please get in touch if you could help for an hour. Donabate parkrun is a free, timed 5k run, walk or jog that takes place at 9:30am every Saturday at Newbridge House. You can contact us by email if yo are interested at Donabate@parkrun.com or send us a message on Facebook.

It’s not often that we get to write about History Makers but that’s what the U13 boys squad from St Pats are! A massive Buladh Bós to them for winning their Juvenile Hurling League for the first tice in the Club’s almost hundred year history. They were the first Juvenile team in the Club ever to compete at this level and now only a few scant years later, they’re the first to take a Juvenile Title. Winning a League Title in any sport is a fantastic achievement but to win one in a recently introduced discipline with no older juvenile squads ahead to guide you is a feat unto itself.This squad might be the first to play both Hurling and Football but they’re not the only ones. They’re leading the charge in Pats Juvenile section where U13 down all play Gaelic Football along with Hurling/Camogie. What a fantastic position to be in as the Club approaches their century in 2024. Who could’ve imagined back in 1924 that they’d have 1,100 members and be playing Football, LGFA, Hurling & Camogie. If you or your children would like to join the fun, just email them at info@stpatsgaa.com

Recently, The Tower Singing Circle had an event by zoom as part of Fingal Inclusion Week. The theme of the night was Songs of Emigration. Performers sang a range of songs from Doonaree to N17 and people emigrated from the Southside to the Northside for the night! There was even one person from Canada - Seán Buckley from The Burrow who emigrated there many decades ago. The Tower Singing Circle wish to thank FIngal County Council for their support for the event especially Janette Scott Community Officer for our area, who joined them at the beginning to wish them well. The Tower Singing Circle meet on zoom on Monday nights, any song is welcome and the invitation is available by emailing a request to margaretgodwin59@gmail.com.

November was another action packed month for our Athletes. We were very excited and happy to welcome 15 new Young Athletes from our waiting list! Some of our new friends had been waiting over a year to join us, so it was lovely to finally meet them and their parents. We had lots of fun practising our running, jumping, balancing, throwing and catching! We did lots of smiling, laughing and giggling too – even though we really don’t need any practice with those.It’s not just our athletes who are busy. Our volunteers between them have invested hundreds of hours in training courses; from child safeguarding to sports specific coaching. One of our coaches, Louise, has just finished training to train other coaches. Louise is now a qualified tutor with Special Olympics Ireland who will deliver the Sport Ireland Coaching Children course to aspiring SO coaches. Well done Louise!

We had some visitors from UCD School of Health and Human Performance to observe how awesome we are; our club is helping with a physical activity study in conjunction with Special Olympics Ireland. One of the purposes of the study will be to develop coaching drills for SO Clubs. The results will also help to develop a video gaming application capable of supporting movement skills through a safe, educational and fun play experience.We had great fun helping Hayley and their wonderfl eam and we already can’t wait for their next visit.

News from the North Pole is that all of our athletes are on the good list again and you know who will have treats for them again this year! On behalf of all our club members we’d like to say thank you to all our supporters for another wonderful year.We wish you all a happy and peaceful festive season.

You may recognise the Christmas tree in the picture, it was the one that was knit or crocheted by many of the local ladies as an inclusion project for last year. And where is it now? It is in its original squares again BUT these are also being now transformed into knee blankets that will be presented to the Hospice. While it has been another very strange year for everyone, we have been able to join each other in our various classes! We celebrate that this has been possible. We also hope that this will continue into the new year and that we will be able to restart some of our missing classes too. We have certainly missed our music classes and not being able to perform our Christmas offering.In November we had a visit from five other Community Centres during Inclusion Week. The representatives joined us for some of our classes with a view to starting a programme like AAfA in their centres. We offered Sit and Get fit, Stronger for Longer and Meditation to them and finished off with lunch from Pea and Pod. And speaking of Pea and Pod, we are really pleased to have the café open and it is always a good finish to a class to go in and have a cuppa and a chat afterwards. Our AGM will be in January and it is your opportunity to get involved. Keep a lookout for the date for that and also for registering for our next session of classes. If you would like to take a more involved role in helping with the actual running of Active Age for All, we would love to hear from you and while you don’t need any particular skills, it would be great to see offers from you if you have administration, accounts or website experience. Just leave a message on the AAfA phone 086 8806808 and leave your name and phone number.If you are new to the area or new to retirement – you just need to be 55+ - you can call in to DPCC and collect an AAfA New Member form and fill it out and leave it for us, or email us at the address above and we email a form out to you. We can make contact and will do our best to include you in classes as soon as possible.

Leithinis Donabate Portrane CCE has had a busy few weeks.Our AGM was held on the 10th of November and a new Committee was elected.We took part in Fingal Inclusion week on the 19th November which allowed our members to showcase their talents. A great night was had by all.Fingal’s Creative Ireland Project 2021 invited applications for grant aid for cultural projects. Initiated by Leithinis CCE the Dublin County Board of Comhaltas Ceoltori Eireann applied for and were successful in securing grant aid for a project to highlight the rich heritage of music, song and dance which Comhaltas actively encourages and promotes.To this end a young talented crew led by award winning film maker and champion all Ireland Fiddle Player Naoise Kettle filmed some of our members playing tunes and dancing in the newly refurbished Donabate Parish Hall. We are looking forward to seeing the finished video.We are happy to announce that the Traditional Music Sessions in Keelings started back on the 16th November. The session was led by Denis Stack. Leithinis wish to thank Denis and fellow musicians for a great evening’s entertainment. The sessions will be held on the third Tuesday every month, with the exception of the December session which will be held on the 7th. We hope to see you all there.From January, 2022 we will be offering Guitar lessons. If you are interested in joining Leithinis Donabate Portrane CCE please email us at leithinis@comhaltas.net. Details of our classes, teachers etc can be found on our webpage leithinis.com.We would like to wish our members a safe and happy Christmas and healthy New Year.