Did you know that Irish equality legislation gives Guide Dog and Assistance Dog owners the right to access businesses and services without discrimination which includes access to all forms of public transport, including bus, train, tram, taxi, plane or ferry. Also, all forms of hospitality accommodation including hotels, Airbnbs, hostels or holiday rental properties establishments that provide food, including cafes, restaurants, pubs, delis and supermarkets.

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities of which Ireland is a signatory, articles 19,20,29 and 30 on accessibility and participation place an obligation on public and private service providers to be inclusive and the lack of access experienced by Guide Dog and Assistance Dog owners is a clear breach of their human rights under the Convention. You can show your support for access rights by displaying the Irish Guide Dogs for the Blind Access window sticker in recognition of Guide and Assistance Dog owners.

You can order your FREE sticker from access@guidedogs.ie. At present in North County Dublin there are several Businesses showing support by displaying the access sticker, including Millfield Shopping Centre, Cuddles Pet Store Millfield, Dempseys Bar-Lounge Balbriggan and McMeel’s Pharmacy, Skerries. Let us know if you want an access sticker and we will get it to you for display.

Are you looking for ways to support your local Balbriggan/North County Dublin Branch of Guide Dogs? Well recently we placed a large collection dog in the Shoreline Hotel, Donabate. This large collection dog has a QR code on it, so if you don’t have change you can now use your phone to scan the Q.R. code and donate to the Balbriggan/North County Dublin Branch of Guide Dogs. A big thank you to Andy O’Neill of the Central Lounge in Balbriggan for making the connection for our Branch and to the hotel manager, Brendan for his support.

You can contact Balbriggan/North County Dublin Branch of Irish Guide Dogs by phone/text
0857663107, email: GuideDogsBalbriggan@gmail.com or find us on Facebook at Balbriggan
Branch of Guide Dogs.

We kicked off 2025 with lots of new coloured belts following our Winter Grading Examinations. All students are now working on the next steps of their skills development to improve their karate basics and are learning their new Kata which will be needed for the next examination.

We also had our traditional invitational class with our students’ parents. Parents come along and tried karate beside their child and had lots of fun. It gives Parents a great idea of what their children are learning and, in some cases, encourages a Parent to join our club to learn Karate for themselves.

We hosted JKS Ireland Instructor training and Open Squad Training session recently. These proved to be very enjoyable sessions with the next ones planned for February.

We are proud to announce that we are the host club for the JKS Ireland Open Championship 2025 which will be held in February 2025. Planning and organising is underway and their will be a wide range of events to cater for beginners, novices, and more advanced students. The Championship is open to Shotokan clubs nationally and we hare hoping for a good turnout.

We are looking forward to a full and busy schedule for 2025. Along with our regular classes, we will have Competitions, Squad training sessions and visits from Japanese Karate Instructors to help us in our training. We also have the European Karate Championships to look forward to in September 2025
Our membership is growing but we are still looking for new members to join us (Children, Young People & Adults). Contact Dermot on 087-8073885 for details on how to join. You can also contact us on Facebook: JKS Swords Karate Club or on Instagram: @jks_swords_karate_club

Article by Ken Duffy

Feb 2025 - We are now into the second month of 2025 and its all systems go, but to date, 2024 has been Swords Tidy Towns most successful year. We celebrated twenty years as a voluntary group, and we won our first National Tidy Towns Competition Gold Medal.

I would like to take this opportunity on behalf of our Executive Committee to extend a big thank you to all our wonderful hard-working volunteers over the past twenty years who contributed, we would not have got here without you.

We would also like to thank Fingal County Council for their unwavering support on our journey to the gold medal and our locally elected representatives.

The support we receive from large and small local business both financially and with feet on the ground helping with projects, is as always, very much appreciated.

The many weekly messages of encouragement we receive from our 4000 Facebook followers is a great boost to our dedicated volunteers and much appreciated by them, keep them coming.

The members of Swords Tidy Towns would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a Very Happy Belated New Year.

This picture was taken at the the annual get together of Swords Meals on Wheels volunteers in the Atrium of the FCC offices in Swords, who were joined by most of the local councillors (Dean Mulligan, Darragh Butler, Darren Jack Kelly, Joe Newman and John Smyth)were in attendance along with local TD Ann Graves…. We also had the Deputy Lord Mayor Cllr. JK Onwumereh who gave a very inspiring speech in support of the work of Swords Meals on Wheels.

Swords Meals on Wheels were out every day over Christmas and have delivered in excess of 25,000 meals over the past year all over the greater Swords area, they are currently delivering in excess of 100 meals daily… a special thanks to Councillor Joe Newman for all his work in helping to organise and support for this event.

What a brilliant few days for our Science students and their teachers! Huge congratulations to the entire team on what they have showcased and achieved! A phenomenal 13 projects were selected from St Joseph’s for showcase at this year’s final of the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition in the RDS by students in 2nd, 3rd, TY and 5th Year!

The level of detail and analytical investigation in each of our students’ projects was incredible and we are so proud of you all! Well done to Stephanie who came 3rd place in her category, to Louis who received a Highly Commended and Display award, to Martha who received a Highly Commended award, to Judy, Asha and Aoife who also received a Highly Commended award and to Allison and Emily who received a Display award. The projects covered areas such as AI, dentistry, wind turbines, energy generated by waves, water currents and a peer-to-peer tutoring app and more! Huge well done to all students who submitted projects for entry into this year’s competition - the number is growing and growing each year, highlighting the value placed on this in the school as it is now part of who we are and what we do!

A huge well done and thank you to the teachers in the Science and Computer Science departments in the school for their work and commitment to this and for mentoring, nurturing and supporting the students and their inquisitve minds! We are so proud of all of our fantastic students! The future is bright.

Christmas Day swim at Rush Sailing Club was a great success! Families coming together to brave the cold and support the RNLI and the Irish Cancer Society, huge thanks to the Commodore and committee of RSC for facilitating this event year on year.

The €3,500 raised for the Irish Cancer Society, an impressive amount and it is a great start to the fundraising for 2025 for the Rush Daff Day Committee. Huge thanks goes to the McAllister Family - “The Macks” – who donned their yellow daff day t-shirts and did a round of the local public houses on Christmas eve getting a great response from everyone out enjoying the festivities. Paul Thorne raised money from his colleagues in Dublin Bus and braved the water on Christmas morning and huge thanks to everyone who donated.

Special thanks should also go to Rush Golf Club, AMC Catering, and the Harbour Bar for their generous contributions. Their support clearly played a vital role in reaching the impressive €3,500 total.
With Daffodil Day on March 28th, the momentum from the Christmas swim and the community’s collective efforts are sure to make it an even bigger success. This kind of generosity and togetherness is what makes Rush such a special place.

Continuing our promotion of the Sustainable Development Goals SDG is “Good Health & Well-Being”. It is well known that volunteering is good for people’s mental health, and the feeling of satisfaction associated with being part of a group of volunteers who have achieved a combined goal is very gratifying. In Rush Tidy Towns we have a wonderful group of volunteers who do a huge amount of work for the benefit of our town. You too can get involved by sending your phone number to tidytownsrush@gmail.com and we can add you to the volunteer WhatsApp group.

Rush Tidy Towns also run the Let’s Play Rush initiative in conjunction with Fingal County Council, Rush Scouts & Rush Community Council. This involves putting on a series of free play events for families in Rush at Easter, Summer and Halloween. This encourages people to get involved in the community in addition to being active.

You can always join our committee in 2025 as well, see flyer for details. This allows you to play an active role in the community and having a voice on the things that matter.

OLIO

OLIO is a free app connecting neighbours with each other, and volunteers with local businesses, so that surplus food can be shared, not thrown away. OLIO have continued their work locally collecting surplus food from Tesco Rush and uploading onto the OLIO App and through the App many people have contributed to preventing so much food from being wasted by requesting the items they like. Thank you to all the App users for continuously supporting OLIO throughout the year. The stats on what has been achieved locally in Rush are contained below. Why not download the App yourself and begin saving food from going to waste? Check the app every Thursday at 20:30 to see what is available to collect in Rush!

Huge congratulations to our U16 Girls Basketball team who came out on top as the best team in Ireland when they were crowned All Ireland Champions, U16 Division A after a thrilling final against St Mary’s, Mallow in the National Basketball Arena, Tallaght yesterday.

The girls were amazing throughout the game and held a strong St Mary’s team to a 41-33 win.
Special word of thanks to their Head Coach, Christian McDonnell who has worked so hard for the girls. Christian is a former MCS Student who also won some All-Ireland medals in school!

We could not be prouder of the girls for their achievement!

To read a full write-up of the match from Basketball Ireland and a gallery of photos taken by our Malahide CS’s roving photographer, Dan Clohessy (6th Year) visit www.ireland.basketball.com.

The Malahide Lions Club held its annual Christmas appeal over the weekend of 13th and 14th December last. The appeal was strongly supported by the people of Malahide and raised the impressive sum of just over €10,000. This was immediately used to provide food vouchers for local families and individuals in need. The large amount raised will enable the Malahide Lions Club to continue their support for families and individuals in need into the leaner New Year period.

Malahide Lions Club are incredibly grateful for the continuing generosity of the community in donating to our annual Christmas appeal. It may have been a cold weekend but the warmth and generosity of the people of Malahide kept the Lions going during the appeal.

Many thanks also to the members of the CORus choir who braved the conditions and joined the Lions at the Diamond on Saturday to sing seasonal favourites which brought a very festive feel to the village and provided such great entertainment for the crowd.

Malahide Musical & Dramatic Society are proud to present Urinetown The Musical! This will run from Tuesday 18th February to Saturday 22nd February 2025, nightly @ 7.30pm.

Urinetown is a wickedly funny, fast-paced, and surprisingly intelligent comedic romp. In the not-so-distant future, a terrible water shortage and 20-year drought has led to a government ban on private toilets and a proliferation of paid public toilets, owned and operated by a single megalomaniac company: the Urine Good Company. If the poor don’t obey the strict laws prohibiting free urination, they’ll be sent to the dreaded and mysterious “Urinetown.” After too long under the heel of the malevolent Caldwell B. Cladwell, the poor stage a revolt, led by a brave young hero, fighting tooth and nail for the freedom to pee “wherever you like, whenever you like, for as long as you like, and with whomever you like.”

Tickets available here - malahidemusical.com/tickets