As Donabate grows, residents campaign for a new cultural and civic centre

Gemma Roche was outside Pipers Take Away in Portrane one day in October, when she spotted a poster in the window of the cottage.

It advertised a local meeting, and a local campaign for a new cultural and civic centre in Donabate.

Born and raised in the seaside town, 19-year-old Roche was struck by the idea, she said on Tuesday, walking against a chilly wind down the Portrane Road.

“I don’t really drink coffee or alcohol, and there’s not a lot to do here if you don’t do either of those things,” she said.

She would love it if there was another kind of space, she says. “Where people can go that’s not reliant on drinking,” she says.

She has taken dance classes in the Donabate Portrane Community and Leisure Centre, she says. “But there isn’t anything like a theatrical space, or where concerts would be done.”

Corina Johnston, a local area representative for Labour, says that there are currently two venues in use in the town – the community centre and the parish hall. “They’re used by all groups.”

But it’s hard to bag those, she says. “You have to book it really far in advance, and there’s no stage facilities or permanent exhibitions.”

What Johnston, Roche and others are looking for is a multifunctional space, one that could accommodate youth services and a theatre with room for between 200 and 300 people.

“We’re at a point now in time where a lot of the lands are zoned for housing, but we need facilities like this provided in tandem with homes,” says Johnston.

Fingal County Council did not respond to a query about whether it would support the idea of creating a new cultural and civic centre in the Donabate area.

Donabate at a crossroads

Culturally, Donabate is a vibrant area, says Johnston. “We’d have approximately 30 cultural groups and they don’t have a permanent home, currently.”

There are local poetry and theatre groups, dramatic societies, trad sessions and the annual Bleeding Pig Cultural Festival, says Labour TD Duncan Smith. “There is a strong cultural tradition on the peninsula.”

But Smith says the existing community centre doesn’t have the capacity to host all these.

The Donabate Local Area Plan – which ran from 2016 to 2020 – included an objective that the council support the provision of a community, cultural, exhibition and performing arts centre.

Off the back of this commitment, Johnston and Smith called the public meeting last October to discuss the idea, says Ann Hogan, who chairs Crossroads, a committee then set up to push for the centre.

Locals have grown more aware in recent years that there isn’t enough space for cultural events, says Hogan. “The community centre has run out of space.”

The existing community centre was built in 2001, she says. “It’s the newest public building in the village.”

Census data from 2022 puts the Donabate-Portrane population just below 12,000, says Johnston. “Forty-one percent are under 30, and 31 percent are under 19. It’s a young population and there are no youth facilities here.”

It isn’t that the peninsula is deprived of all facilities. For sporty kids, there is no shortage of playing pitches of clubs, says Ali Herlihy, a mother of three. “My kids are very involved in GAA and tennis, except for one child who is more arty.”

The existing cultural and arts groups are fragmented, she says. “They meet in different places. It’s hard to get a handle on what is available.”

There is a scarcity of music and dance teachers too, Hogan says. “People are going to Balbriggan for ballet classes.”

Space to grow

On 4 January, the need for a cultural and civic centre was raised at the council’s Balbriggan/Rush-Lusk/Swords area committee by Labour Councillor Robert O’Donoghue, Social Democrats Councillor Paul Mulville and Fianna Fáil Councillor Adrian Henchy.

Their motion proposed that the committee recommend that a council site within the Ballymastone-Corballis area be designated for the facility, alongside affordable housing.

In a written report responding to the motion, Aoife Sheridan, a senior executive officer at the council, pointed to projects already underway around there. Work had already started on a big development of 28 hectares at Ballymastone, she said.

The project foresees 1,200 homes, of which 20 percent would be for sale through the government’s affordable-housing scheme. (The price tags aren’t yet public though.)

Her response highlights the sporting pitches that would be added alongside these.

Also, the town’s library is to be moved from the community and leisure centre to the former credit union, Ballisk House, on the Portrane Road, she wrote. “This will release valuable space within the community centre for community use.”

The freed-up space in the existing centre can be repurposed to meet the community’s needs, including that of a cultural space for performances and exhibitions, says her response.

Fianna Fáil Councillor Adrian Henchy, who sits on the existing community centre’s board, said the library move was positive news, as the building was currently at full capacity. “We’re not in a position to facilitate new groups, indeed some existing community groups.”

While O’Donoghue, the Labour councillor, welcomed the update on the old credit union, he cast doubt on whether the community centre could work for a performance, exhibition and youth space.

According to the local area plan, Donabate has the capacity to add around 4,000 new homes, which if delivered over the next decade with no additional facilities would be a disaster, he said.

The cultural and civic centre could help prevent that, he said. “This proposal goes some way to meeting the requirements of an expanding population.”

A public-private partnership would be the best way to deliver this community space, he said.

As Donabate expands, the council can’t just focus on building houses, Henchy said. “It’s about building communities and we need to future plan.”

Donabate’s sporting clubs are doing quite well, he said. “We need to bring the arts, culture and heritage in line with that as well.”

Sheridan, responding to the motion, said there will be extra community space provided in Ballisk House. “That should alleviate some of the difficulties.”

On Tuesday evening, Social Democrats Councillor Paul Mulville said one of the sites that the campaign group is looking at for the potential new cultural facility is off the New Road.

This land is just outside the town centre, close to the Ballymastone site, he says. “It’s got planning permission for homes that were never built. The council bought it, and we’re proposing now to put that on this site as well as the affordable homes.”

Most of the council-owned lands off New Road are zoned for residential development, councillor Henchy told the area committee on 4 January.

But, “we do now have from the existing new [Fingal Development Plan 2023 to 2029], we did rezone a parcel of land there for community infrastructure”, he said.

What next?

While the New Road lands have been flagged as a possible place for the proposed new centre, Smith, the Labour TD, says the committee is also looking at a number of sites. “We’re trying not to be prescriptive at this stage.”

“If it becomes about one particular site before we get the council’s buy-in, it could trip,” he says. “But we would like it to be central to the existing village.”

They are currently looking at public lands, he says.

But, Johnston says, the group is open to a kind of public-private partnership if they can launch the project. “It could be managed by the community. We’re open to managing this ourselves.”

Back in Donabate, Gemma Roche – sitting across the street from the single-storey parish hall – says the committee is interviewing different groups to figure out what they need.

Ultimately, Roche hopes the Crossroads committee can help to establish a new space for socialising on the peninsula, she says. “I want to see a place for kids, who aren’t into sports, aren’t into school, where they are able to find their niche.”