Lusk Summer Festival in June was a fantastic day for the whole community and Lusk Action Group would like to thank Fingal County Council, Progressive Credit Union, our amazing organising committee and all the people who helped to make it happen, once again.

Lusk was nominated by Fingal County Council for the Pride of Place awards, which will take place in the 3rd September, and we hope everyone will do their bit in helping to have Lusk looking its best. You can join the Tidy Towns and Lusk Community Cleaning Group in their efforts, or just clean up outside your own patch. Every little effort helps. It is quite an honour to be nominated and we will be using the day to showcase the best of Lusk and its wonderful community.

Enjoy the rest of the Summer! All in Lusk Action Group

As part of the Afro-Irish Festival and Africa Day celebrations, children from 6th class and 2nd class from St. Catherine’s NS performed in The Lark, Balbriggan. They performed some African drumming, African chanting and danced to Waka Waka This is Africa. The school band also performed Massive Attacks’s Teardrop!

On Friday 24th of May, St. Catherine’s NS hosted an extremely successful Multi-Cultural Day, organised by the school’s PA! This is only a sneak preview of some of the Country’s tables, the foods and the activities of the day!

A 3rd annual football friendly took place between St Caherines and St Brendan’s Loughshinny. The games were very competitive and played in the right spirit with St Brendan’s just about having the edge
Absolutely superb performance by the St Catherines boys and girls

A lot of friendships exist between children on opposing teams made for a great banter filled occasion. Roll on next year!

Earlier this summer Lusk was chosen as the town to represent Fingal in the Pride of Place Awards. The Pride of Place is an all-island competition that recognises improvements made by local communities to create civic pride in their area. The competition focus is about people coming together to shape, change and enjoy all that is good about their town.

Lusk will be competing against 25 other towns from other Local Authority Areas in the category of towns between 5,000 – 10,000 people in their population with the judging taking place on the 3rd of September this year. The committee set up comprises many of the community groups in the town including the Community Council, LAG, Men & Womens Shed and Tidy Towns/Cleanup Group.

Councillor Rob O’Donoghue commented on the ongoing work that, ‘I have attended the committee and it is working diligently to put Lusk’s best foot forward for when the judges arrive in September. The community groups have coalesced successfully and are planning a number of initiatives to put Lusk in the best light possible. Everyone involved are volunteers and they deserve a great deal of thanks for giving their time and energy to what I hope will be a winning entry.’

In other Council news, the period for observations on the application for the Lusk Sports Hub, to An Bord Pleanala ended in early July. The application will now be evaluated by the Bord in the coming months. O’Donoghue stated, ‘I made a submission myself endorsing the application and it my fervent hope that the application is swiftly granted by the Bord so we can start looking at the tendering and building phases of this game changing facility for Lusk.’

There has been plenty of action during the summer months with our club athletes taking part in numerous road races as well as track and field competitions. A few club members have also taken the opportunity to visit parkruns in other countries while away on holidays.

Training plans are available for all distances and many have commenced the long road towards the Dublin City Marathon in October. Our next race is the 7k Man O War round on Thursday 15th August at 7pm. Official return to training is on Tuesday 3rd September and new members are most welcome.

While the young students of JUNSA Taekwondo are on their summer break, our more advanced students are still upping their game for an upcoming tournament in Ireland.

The Korean ambassadors cup will take place in Dublin after the summer.

Junsa Taekwondo will be recruiting for the start of September classes.

June and July were very busy month for the ladies in Lusk ICA.

Summer Festival
For the Lusk summer festival held and in Orlynn Park in June we set up stall showing off samples of arts and crafts. Rob O Donoghue Labour councillor for Fingal visited Caroline O’Malley and Maureen Aupy at the stand.

Pitch&Putt
Congratulations to Mary Shorthall and Teresa Kilmurray from Lusk ICA are through to the ICA All Ireland P&P in Seapoint 14th September, good luck in the final ladies.

Farewell party
A Big Thanks to the fabulous refreshments at Fr George’s farewell celebration on 2nd July. It was a really lovely Parish occasion and great for ICA to be involved.

Flavours of Fingal
With stiff competition Lusk ICA were awarded lots of prizes, at the horticultural tent in the Flavours of Fingal. Teresa Kilmurray got first prize for her soda bread and scones also an award for her embroidery. Teresa Killoran and Alma Farrell for their paintings, Mary Hagan for her apple tart and Caroline O Malley for her picture frame.

Annual ICA Party
The ladies enjoyed a wonderful day out at ICA Annual Summer Garden Party on 6th July in An Grianan in Termonfeckin, Co. Louth.

Congratulations to Teresa Kilmurray who was our proud winner of the best dressed lady! We also wish to remember the family of Josie Doyle who was an active member of Lusk ICA, may she rest in peace.

Lusk Community First Responders have been extremely busy since we went live on 12 June last. In the first 24 hours, we responded to 4 calls in the community. Our members have been delighted to be able to put their last few months of training to use and provided assistance to patients while they are waiting for an ambulance to arrive. Remember – you don’t need to call us, we will be immediately dispatched by the National Ambulance Service when a call is made for certain types of incidents.

We were also thrilled to attend the Lusk Summer Festival. We were overwhelmed by the level of support, enthusiasm and encouragement received from the public. We spent the day chatting to people about what we do, hearing stories of people’s experiences with other first responder schemes, and demonstrating how to provide CPR, with queues of people young and old waiting to have their go. It was brilliant to see so many people of all ages giving it a go, and while we hope that no one will ever need to use that skill, if it is ever needed someday, they might remember what they learned on a sunny windy summers day in Lusk! Many thanks to the Summer Committee Festival for making space for us at such a wonderful event.

Lusk CFR is actively seeking more volunteers, and no prior medical experience or training is necessary as continuous training will be offered to all recruits.

If you still want to help but are not in a position to volunteer, you can donate securely towards our running costs by visiting our website www.luskcfr.ie or contact us directly at info@luskcfr.ie. You can also donate via our QR code. All our members are volunteers and the costs go directly towards purchasing and maintaining equipment.

Africa Day was the opportunity for Lusk Community Council to launch it’s new podcast, Listen Up Lusk, which is now available on Spotify. The inaugural podcast hosted by Akintunde Idowu features interviews with the Mayor of Fingal, Adrian Henchy, Minister Joe O’Brien, Pastor Habeeb Goodluck, Dr. Sarah Taaffe and the Akano Rythm Brothers. The podcast discussion covers what it means to be Mayor of Fingal, the role of Africa Day, multiculturalism, work in Africa and the role that music can play in bringing communities together.

Listen Up Lusk will be used to give voice to community ideas, innovations and important stories for the town. Over the coming months we will be particularly working with our young people in the town to share their thoughts and ideas.

The local elections took place on the 7th of June with 40 seats on Fingal County Council up for election. The Rush-Lusk local election area is one of seven LEA’s in Fingal and saw the election of five Councillors. Heading the poll was Cllr Rob O’Donoghue with 3,185 first preference votes and being deemed elected on the first count for his second five-year term on the Council.

Speaking about the results, Councillor O’Donoghue stated, ‘I would like to say thank you to the people of Lusk for your support in the Local Elections. I am genuinely overwhelmed at receiving 26% of first preference votes in the constituency. I am going to continue to work hard for all my constituents and will be available as always for any issues large or small. I would like in particular to thank my canvassers, leafleters and posterers with which I would never have been able to cover the ground that we did, I am eternally grateful for their support.

There is a lot of work to do in the coming Council terms and there are a number of projects that I would like to see continue to be progressed in Lusk including, the Lusk Sports Hub currently seeking planning permission from An Bord Pleanala, the Lusk Town Centre First Plan which was published in May and to ensure the sustainable development of the town. I look forward to representing Lusk for the duration of the term to the very best of my ability.’

Summer is here and this is an opportunity to say a big thank you to our hardworking coaches who should now be taking a well-deserved break after a hectic few months. Congratulations to our juvenile relay teams on their recent success and after Ireland’s fabulous performances at the European Championships we expect relay events to be even more popular. Well done to everyone who has participated in some of the many races and field events that have taken place over the last few months. Registration is now open for the 7k Man O’War Round on 15th August. This is becoming more popular each year so sign up soon to avoid disappointment.