The second phase of the Fingal County Council development plan is open and we encourage the community to engage with this. The document is very comprehensive so we will bring attention to areas of interest to Lusk on Facebook to make it easier to understand. This is a very important phase, and one of only a couple of opportunities to effect important change for Lusk. Very disappointingly, our plans for a biodiversity garden have had to come to an end for now. Unfortunately the access was deemed not suitable by Fingal County Council and to rectify this would have entailed using capital which, at the moment, is destined for other priorities in the town, as Lusk aims towards delivering the 2030 plan. Monday the 7th March will be our AGM. At the moment, it seems likely that this will have to be online. Please email us at luskactiongroup@gmail.com or call us on 0863017842 if you wish to attend. We also welcome new members at our AGM so if you are interested in joining our Lusk Action Group committee, get in touch

Pat Kelly LTTA

Lusk Tidy Towns Committee are delighted that our markings in the National Tidy Towns Competition went up by 5 points despite all the building works in Lusk. Thank you to everyone who supported our Christmas Card Launch and to those who purchased the card and calendar. It is now 30 years of producing cards, and a book will be produced of the cards and verses written by local residents and photographers. Wishing everyone a very happy healthy new year..
Also this month Lusk Tidy Towns are very proud of the work they carry out on behalf of this community. However In order to appreciate the extent of change in our environment, snap-shots of old and new can be very helpful. The photo of the square in Lusk was taken in 1980.

As we crystal ball gaze over coming months, we must also start planning for what we know. St. Patrick’s Festival will provide an opportunity for the community to celebrate our National Holi-day and while we don’t yet know what that will look like, we are starting to plan for the day, in the hope that Lusk will be able to have its traditional parade. Come what may, the Community Coun-cil will look to brighten up the town with banners and bunting. We will have the Round Tower il-luminated again for the festival and all going well, we will have a real life parade on the streets of Lusk.We are encouraging every household to play their part by flying flags and bunting across the town for St. Patrick’s Festival. If everyone makes an little effort, it will lift the spirits of the town and in the light of the last two Covid years, this will be much needed. Lusk Community Clean-Up, organized by Willie McGee, is one such example of a bunch of volunteers making a big difference with the appearance of the town. Willie particularly wants to give a shout out to Lusk Community College students for taking part in the Clean-Up.The Fingal Development Plan Review is ongoing with motions being proposed by Councillors in recent weeks. The Draft Fingal Development Plan will be on public display for a period of 10 weeks from February 2022 to May 2022. This will be your opportunity to comment on the plan and to review what is being proposed. In the context of the Development Plan Review we have delayed the first meeting of the Lusk Vision 2030 Imple-mentation Group to February. 2022 is looking good so far. Let’s hope it continues.

At the January Area meeting Cllr Rob O’Donoghue tabled a motion regarding improved walking a cycling infrastructure to service within the town boundary of Lusk and also facilitate connectivity to the Rush & Lusk Train Station in line with the concept of a 15-minute city or town centre first approach.In response the Council stated that plans have been identified on their programme of works under the Lusk Station Road East West Route and their Lusk Village Scheme, works that are currently planned to commence with feasibility and development in the first quarter of 2023. Cllr O’Donoghue stated that the identified works are much needed in the town with peak hour traffic between Lusk and the train station growing apace. He continued that ‘the town centre first approach would facilitate better mobility links for the people of Lusk within the town and the cycle link to the train station would provide much needed access to the train station that can offer cyclists and pedestrians an alternative route to the train station which would circumvent the usage of the busy main Lusk to Rush road. I look forward to these plans being brought to fruition in the future.’

Congratulations to Lusk farmer Shane Halpin who won “Other Enterprises” category (Horticulture) at the FBD Young Farmer of the Year Awards 2021 in association with Macra na Feirme in partnership with the IFA. The competition was first launched in 1999 and and has been successful in raising the profile of young farmers within their community by recognising their achievements and contribution to farming.. Shane graduated from Technological University Dublin with a degree in Horticulture. He always had an interest in farming from a very young age, he gained this interest from his grandad and his uncles at their farm in Lusk, he spent all his school holidays working with them. Shane also spent some time working on farms in New Zealand and the USA to gain further experience.Shane started Welgro Produce which is located in Rush, Co. Dublin along with Sean and Gary Weldon in 2020.Welgro is one of only two commerical cucumber growers in Ireland. The company employs up to 15 people at peak times in the areas of grading/picking/packing and distribution. Their company recently won “The Irish Newbie new entrant competition” in association with Teagasc. They were also featured on RTE’s “Ear To The Ground” program recently. Shane is also a member of The North County Dublin Macra na Feirme. Shane made it into the final five of the Young Farmer of the Year Award 2021 by winning his category. The awards were announced on December 17th at an event which was streamed live on Macra Na Feirme’s Facebook page and zoom. After receiving the award Shane said he was extremely proud of his achievement for his company and for the horticulture industry.

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