Balbriggan Meals on Wheels was established to provide meals for people who are ill, recovering from a serious illness, or for some reason are unable to provide meals for themselves.

It’s not all about delivering meals, however!

As well as cooking and distributing meals, we host a Dinner Club three mornings per week: Monday, Wednesday and Friday in our premises at 14 Hampton Street, Balbriggan. At the Dinner Club, you can enjoy a hot meal and relax in the company of the other members. This provides an enjoyable social outlet to people who primarily live alone. We also run activities and occasional trips for Dinner Club clients.

If you, or anyone you know would be interested in coming along to the Dinner Club, please contact us on 01 8416743 (9am – 1pm, Mon – Sat) for further details.

Did you attend our last fundraiser of 2024 in Hers Upstairs above Mrs O’s in the Central Pub Drogheda St Balbriggan? We sold Christmas cards, car raffle tickets and calendars and raised €329.75 for our Balbriggan/North County Dublin Branch of Guide Dogs. Thank you to Andy, Simon of Mrs O’s and everyone who attended and supported us on the day. We hope to see more of you in 2025.

If you want to continue to support our Branch and also have a fun and entertaining February weekend, the Annual Balbriggan Feis is back and being held on Saturday the 8th and Sunday 9th February at Clann Mhuire GAA Hall, Naul, Co. Dublin, K32HK76 with all proceeds in aid of the Irish Guide Dogs for the Blind. Musician Kevin Warren will be in attendance and there will be plenty of fantastic dancing for you to enjoy! Entrance tickets are available on the day at €5.00, why not go along for a great day out and to support our Balbriggan/North County Dublin Branch of Guide Dogs. Last year the wonderful sum of €9,500 was raised for our Branch. We want to say a big thank you to the organisers Damien O’Shaughnessy and Anne McFadden, the participants, attendees and volunteers who put the Feis together for their amazing continued support.

Finally, we would like to say a massive thank you to everyone who supported our Balbriggan/North County Dublin Branch of Guide Dogs in 2024, we are delighted to say a fantastic total of over €50,000 for the Irish Guide Dogs for the Blind was raised throughout the year, which would not be possible without your support! Please keep an eye on future articles and we will confirm the exact amount.

In 2024, 27 people visited the HQ in Cork from our Branch, if you would be interested in visiting the HQ in 2025 please reach out to us on the information below;

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

Fingal County Council have been allocated €20m funding from The National Transport Authority for the ongoing delivery of active travel schemes in 2025.

With a total of €294m being awarded to local authorities, this funding will support a range of walking and cycling schemes including improved pedestrian environments, new segregated cycling lanes, pedestrian and cycling bridges and pedestrian crossings.

Welcoming this announcement, Mayor of Fingal, Cllr Brian McDonagh said: ’’ We are very happy to have received this funding from the NTA. It is a significant support and endorsement for our commitment to Active Travel in Fingal. Active Travel has many benefits for the entire community, it is an essential tool to fight global heating and will deliver a healthier environment for everyone. We want to push harder and do more so we will happily take all the funding we can get.’’

This funding has been awarded to 48 different projects in the Fingal area and includes a variety of Active Travel investments such as Fingal Coastal Way, Donabate Pedestrian and Cycle Bridge, Harry Reynolds Road Cycleway in Balbriggan, Feltrim Road Cycling Infrastructure and Skerries Active Travel Plan.
16 Schools will receive funding under the Safe Routes to School Programme which aims to improve ongoing issues of safety and congestion at the school gate. It also focuses on improving routes to school by improving walking and cycling infrastructure.

To learn more about active travel and strategic infrastructure projects in Fingal visit www.fingal.ie/activetravel

Fingal County Council has announced updated charges for its non-recyclable and green household waste at its Recycling Centres located at Estuary in Swords and Coolmine in Dublin 15.
Charges for disposing of household recyclable waste at the centres is free and remains unchanged.
The Council stated that, “The changes reflect a balanced approach to maintaining and improving this vital local service while addressing the expanded expenditure costs. A review of the service by the council found that there had been a significant rise in the use of the recycling centres resulting in a deficit of costs for managing and maintaining the facilities. This has risen from €0.8m in 2015 to more than €2m for the current year.”

Locals will now have to pay €12 for a car boot containing General Waste (e.g. bulky waste such as carpet, mattresses, wood, metal, etc., with full cars, jeeps and SUVs charged €30; Small vans or cars with a trailer will now be charged at €50 while

Vans (Transit size) will now see a cost of €128.

Car boots of Green Waste (e.g. grass clippings, leaves, tree branches and trimmings, etc.) are now charged at €6 with a full carload, Jeep or SUV priced at €10 while Small vans and cars with trailers charged at €35 and vans (Transit size) at €80.

The council also stated, “While the access costs will rise for the domestic non-recyclable and green waste service at the Fingal facilities, it is important to note that there remains no charge for disposing of recyclable items at the Swords and Coolmine centres. This would include items such as paper, bottles, clothes, Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE), tins and discarded cooking oil.”
A detailed list of items that are accepted at the two facilities can be found on the Council’s website: https://www.fingal.ie/recycling-centres

By Mike Power

At this time of year, we often take a nostalgic look back on how things panned out for us and for our families, in the year gone past. We’re certainly older but are we any wiser? Looking at how some former residents of Swords lived their lives before us here, might provide some clues as to what the future holds for us.

Whenever someone sinks a spade into Swords, they often uncover dead remains! This happened in 2010 when archaeologists digging where Butlers stands in the Pavillions today, found 68 ancient bodies at a place called Mt Gamble. These folk lived in Swords from 600 - 1,000 ad and were pagan and Christian people buried together. Some of these men suffered a violent death having been hacked to death with swords, many of the women prematurely aged with arthritis. The Swords of that day was violent, and unpredictable, a population tiny compared with today, of maybe of 50/60.

All these people had dental decay, many having actual abscesses. Imagine living your life every day with constant, unremitting toothache- no dentists for them! These folk had grindingly hard lives, their children inadequate food and suffered premature death as a result. To them, our lives today in Swords would be like living in paradise. Life-Lesson? Appreciate your life.

Later, in medieval times, most people in Swords lived on allotments called ‘burgages’. These radiated off main street on both sides. The houses we see here today stand on exactly the same sites as these old medieval wooden, thatched houses did. What a continuity of over 1000 years of history in our village!
These tenants paid one shilling rent to the authorities, and were also expected to carry swords, bows and spears to defend our town when danger came. The whole area of the East side of main street from the Arches up to the Malahide Road was laid out in 122 of these plots. Forster road runs right over these ancient gardens. These settlers were the first freemen/women of Swords and would have been mainly of English stock. Our village then would have been enclosed by defensive walls, the main gate of which stood right where the Malahide and Dublin roads join today outside of Weatherspoon’s. Life Lesson? An investment in land always pays off!

Our final bit of nostalgia concerns the medieval abbey which was destroyed to build the current St Columba’s church by Francis Johnson in 1811. Only the tower of this gothic church remains to be seen today. The noted historian John D’Alton visiting Swords in 1838 commented on the fine towers and walls which surrounded this important church, one of the finest Irish gothic abbeys of that day. Like much of ancient Swords, we need imagination to conjure up just what an important and historic place both ecclesiastically and politically, our little village was in times past.

Life Lesson? Love the place you grew up in and stand by the kids you played with then.
This makes the child , which makes the man , which in turn , makes the family. Is anything more important…?

Wishing you and your family a prosperous, happy and flourishing 2025 !

2024 will go down as one of the best years the club has had since COVID.

Along with our regular weekly schedule of classes, we also found time to fit in monthly Squad training sessions to prepare members of JKS Ireland for the World Karate Championships which were held in Japan in July 2024. Along with this we also crammed in multiple fund-raising activities to help fund the cost of travelling to the World Championships.

We had a total of five members selected as part of the twenty strong Irish team trained and guided by Dermot Sensei 7th Dan JKS for these World Championships and it was a fantastic experience for everyone who travelled.

We hosted several JKS Ireland National Training events with visiting JKS Japan Instructors. We had a visit from Toyama Sensei in January. We had our annual seminar with World Chief Instructor Kagawa Shihan 9th Dan JKS in May and in October Yamaguchi Sensei visited at the beginning of the month, with Watanabe Sensei visiting at the end. All these Japanese Instructors delivered exciting and dynamic sessions, inspiring attendees to develop their Karate Skills further.

We participated in several competitions during the year, Piltown Open Championships, The Kanazawa Cup, the ONAKAI National Kata Championships and the Murakami Open Sheild. We had a mixture of participants at each event, some novices, and some more experienced competitors. We did well at each bringing home medals and competition experience to the club.

We held two club gradings, in early July and mid-December, where club members showed off what they have been studying during the year and all members who took the grading examinations progressed to their next coloured belt.

2025 promises to be another exciting year for the club as we prepare to take part in the European Karate Championships in Denmark in September. We will have our usual schedule of classes plus additional Squad training sessions, and we will have more visits from Japanese Instructors to help us in our training.
Our membership is growing but we are still looking for new members (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

Congratulations to Brian O’Connell from Swords who was recently named as the winner of the Industry and Community Partnership Award for Maker of the Year, sponsored by Thomas Finn & Co. Sheffield. Brian graduated from Atlantic Technology University BSc in Furniture Design and Manufacture in Letterfrack, Connemara. He is now running his own company called Top Dog Tables.

As part of Fingal County Council’s Town Centre First Initiatives in Rush, we are currently inviting residents, community groups, businesses, and other stakeholders within the town to take part in the attached online survey to have their say on the benefits of living in Rush, and how the town could potentially be improved. This short online survey is now open for completion until Friday 03 January 2025.

Town Centre First is a government initiative which aims to create town centres that function as viable, vibrant, and attractive locations for people to live, work and visit, while also functioning as the service, social, cultural and recreational hub for the local community. Town Centre First recognises that every town is unique. It lays the foundation for each town to develop, at a local level, their own plan led path forward. This initiative will build upon the Urban Framework plan of 2018, in order to build a town which functions for all of its users and residents.

Please visit https://arcg.is/0nPuva0 or scan the QR code in the accompanying picture.

At the recent general election took place on the 29th of November, the Dublin Fingal West Constituency returned three T.D’s, Deputy Louise O’Reilly (Sinn Fein), Cllr Rob O’Donoghue (Labour) and Grace Boland (Fine Gael), with all three candidates passing the quota of 7,530 votes.

Deputy O’Donoghue received a 16.7% of the first preference vote, the highest percentage for his Party in the Country and was deemed elected on the sixth count.

Speaking on his securing of the second of the three seats Deputy O’Donoghue stated, ‘It has been the most draining campaign that I have ever been on and I am thrilled with the results. I would like to thank everyone who helped me during this campaign, from canvassers, leafetlers, posterers and for the amount of time that my team of volunteers gave up to help me over the last two to three months, without their support we would not have taken a seat and I will be forever grateful to each and every person who helped me, it doesn’t matter if it was one day or the entire campaign, it would not have been possible without the team.

‘I would also like to thank everyone in the constituency that came out on the day to vote for me. It has been a privilege to serve as the Councillor for the Rush-Lusk Local Electoral Area for the last seven years and I appreciate the trust that has been placed in me by the people of Fingal West to represent them at national level. I will do my best for the constituency in the coming

Rush Free Stuff
Unwanted Christmas presents? Having a clear out? Then why not join our 5,000+ members who use the “Rush Free Stuff” Facebook group. In this group you can offer or ask for ANYTHING as long as it is free. This is a sustainable way of getting rid of unwanted items around the house or avoiding buying new unnecessarily. Check it out today.

Christmas Jumper Swap and Repair Café
Thank you to everybody who attended our Christmas themed clothes repair cafe and Christmas jumper swap event in Rush Community Centre in November. Special thanks to Paula Lopez and Anna Maguire who along with our committee ensured we had plenty of happy customers. Another great example of the circular economy in action in Rush.

Rush Tidy Towns AGM
Rush Tidy Towns AGM will be held in January in the Community Centre, please check our Facebook page for the date and more details.

Rogerstown Birdwatching
We had a nice crowd at our Rush Tidy Towns Birdwatching event one December morning at Rogerstown. Thank you to Linda Mellon from the Fingal Branch of BirdWatch Ireland for the expert guidance.