In Finglas, an effort to make a park safe for kids to run in

When Stephen Keeler sent photos of syringes and two knives in the grass at Finglas’s Mellowes Park to councillors and Gardaí recently, the reaction was swift, he says.

“There was a bit of a scramble.” Someone came and got them, he says. “But it shouldn’t be reactive.”

Keeler, who organises a junior parkrun there on Sundays, says local residents have complained for years about how unsafe the park can feel at times.

It’s not just the dangerous waste, but also the way pockets of the park have become meeting points for people to use drugs or deal, he says. “It’s a bit of everything.”

Indeed in June 2019, residents in Finglas said they generally felt least safe when “going to the park” in the neighbourhood, and “taking exercise” in the evening, according to a survey commissioned by the Finglas Safety Forum.

Among daytime activities, “going to the park” also ranked lowest for feelings of safety, according to the survey results.

Meanwhile, one of the aims of Dublin City Council’s sports plan is to get more people out and about in parks, particularly in disadvantaged areas.

“It’s a lovely morning,” said Keeler last Friday a little before 11am, casting an eye around the park. “You’d expect lots of dog walkers, people exercising, whatever.”

But, while the park wasn’t empty, there were just a handful of people around – a couple pushing a pram, a guy in high-viz staring ahead as he jogged loops.

Using the park

In some ways, Mellowes Park is perfect for a junior parkrun given its 1km loop, says Keeler.

But along the edge of the park are a few entrances. Organisers send a marshall to each gate to stop kids from running out, he says.

And “it’s always a thing about this one”, he says, pointing towards the northern end of the space. That is near where people using and dealing sometimes congregate.

“Who do I send down to this gate here?” he says. “Do I send a couple of people down?”

On the western edge of the park is a raised concrete slab where people often pause to use, he says.

Scattered around it are pill packets, empty bottles and cans, scrumpled food packaging and an abandoned sleeping bag.

There’s always rubbish left here, he says. “I’ve never seen it clean.”

Keeler talks about two changes he wants. “If this park was, I suppose, even patrolled regularly, by a park warden or the guards,” he says.

Gardaí come sometimes, he says. Community gardaí come down on a Sunday morning to the parkrun if they are on shift, he says.

But he has only once seen the guards in the park by chance when he was walking by, he says. “And I’ve lived here 40 years.”

Requests for more patrols get the same response from both the council and guards, he says. “The answer you kinda get is just that, we don’t have the resources,” he says. “That’s it.”

He also wants to get rid of secluded areas where people gather to use, he says.

In June last year, more than 250 people signed an online petition put together by the Casement Road Residents Committee calling on the council to get rid of the hedges along the park’s western edge.

They wanted a wall instead, with better sight lines, it says. “Parents and guardians would be able to see their children playing in the park, ensuring their safety and peace of mind.”

Conor Reddy, a People Before Profit councillor, said, of the call for a park warden: “I’d absolutely support that.”

He too wonders if, as one part of the response, a redesign with changes to the hedge and the ledge could play a part. “To make it a bit more visible for people.”

Martin Hoey, the chair of the Finglas-Cabra Local Drug and Alcohol Taskforce, said that bins – ones that you could put needles in and couldn’t be pried open – were planned at one point. “I don’t know why it didn’t happen.”

Most of the park is just a massive patch of grass, says Reddy. “It would be nice to see the enhancement of the park.”

Keeler says something similar. At the south end of the Mellowes Park, near the Finglas Sports Centre, is a kids’ playground and some exercise equipment.

That’s all great, Keeler says. But “the park itself, it just feels as if it has been left”.

Dublin City Council has been making big changes to Kildonan Park, which lies about 400m west of Mellowes Park – with landscaping, tree-planting and many new amenities, such as an all-weather sports pitch, skate park, playground, gym equipment and a small basketball court.

Some changes in Mellowes Park would be helpful too, says Keeler.

Wider plans

Dublin City Council’s sports plan puts an emphasis on the need to make physical activity a social norm, built into community life.  It also stresses ramping up use of existing spaces.

Under the plan, which was launched in May last year, an outdoor recreation officer would be assigned to oversee the assessment of all green and open spaces and parks in the city, it says.

They would develop “activation plans” for specific spaces and parks, it says.

Dublin City Council hasn’t responded to a query sent on Friday, asking if that post had been filled and whether any activation plans had yet been drawn up.

Keeler says he thinks the junior parkrun on Sundays is the only organised activity in Mellowes Park at the moment.

“Years ago there used to be football clubs that play here,” he says.

There’s a Gaelic pitch and goals on the grass, he says, where teams train sometimes in summer and there are kickarounds. But no matches, he says.

Mellowes Park is likely to see changes in the years ahead.

In November, Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) applied to An Bord Pleanála for planning permission for the Finglas Luas project, which would extend the light-rail line from Broombridge to Finglas.

The route shows one stop to the north of Mellowes Park, and one just to the south. It would run through the eastern edge of the park.

TII has said the route “could be operational by 2031, subject to planning and funding”.

Keith Connolly, a local Fianna Fáil councillor, said that when he raises how the layout of Mellowes Park could be improved, the council’s parks department says it is waiting for the Finglas Luas.

That’s the feedback, says Connolly. “When that gets the go-ahead, we’ll look at it as a bigger picture. More passive policing, more family friendly.”

A spokesperson for TII said that it had, as part of the consultation process for its planning application, met with local groups, including those involved with Mellowes Park, and is committed to working with local residents.

“We worked to understand how people use public spaces along the Luas Finglas route in order to identify opportunities to enhance the public realm for everyone, not just passengers on the trams,” they said.

They have made several architectural and landscaping proposals in the design to respond to these issues raised by people they met with, said the spokesperson.

The Luas, which will run on an attractive grass track through Mellowes Park, will bring an element of security and movement we hope will help make the park a safer and more active space, they said. “Areas disturbed during the Luas works will be reinstated and more trees planted as part of the scheme’s landscape.”

Also, the project proposes getting rid of the footbridge in the park as part of a plan to reprioritise local roads and build at-grade crossings. “This will provide safer and easier pedestrian access to the Luas stop, bus stops and safe cycle lanes, which will help reconnect the community,” they said.

More services

At a little past 11am last Friday, three men perched for a moment on the edge of a raised stone slab on the edge of Mellowes Park. One lights up, others exchange something.

They stay for a few minutes before moving on.

Hoey, chair of the Finglas-Cabra Local Drug and Alcohol Taskforce, says that in situations such as Mellowes Park, the issue that always returns is that measures can just push people using drugs to somewhere else nearby.

Connolly, the Fianna Fáil councillor, says he thinks that is what has happened in recent months even – that Garda activities elsewhere have maybe pushed people into Mellowes Park.

Reddy, the People Before Profit councillor, raises the same concern and how to respond humanely to all. “It’s a thorny one,” he says.

Underlying the disquiet around Mellowes Park is a much broader issue about the government’s response to drug use in communities, he says. “The whole approach to drugs is a failure.”

Reddy says one response to consider to reduce drug-related litter and improve feelings of safety could be something like the supervised-use centre in the city centre but for Finglas, he says. “These things work.”

He thinks that consideration and research, and talking to people who use drugs in the open in the area, are needed to look at that possibility.

There are great drug-support services in Finglas but they can only do so much, he says. “If we could create more points of contact between people using drugs and services.”

He isn’t sure where such a centre could go, he stresses. “I’m not suggesting we put it near the park.”

Connolly says he doesn’t know about that idea, but outreach services certainly play a role. “Between the outreach, the services, and gardaí patrolling, a redesign, it would certainly stem some of the issues.”

Hoey, the chair of the local drug and alcohol taskforce, says there are very active outreach teams and services in Finglas.

But some people just aren’t in a place to engage, he says. “If people don’t engage, you can’t force somebody.”

Another challenge raised by both Hoey and Reddy is the flow of people who come into Finglas to buy and use, before jumping on a bus back home.

“There’s a lot of people coming in from rural areas,” said Hoey.

Hoey says there is a lot of engagement between local communities, the taskforce, and Gardaí, who respond quickly to reports they may get. People need to report what they see, he says.

Keeler is frustrated though, he said last Friday. “Everybody is kind of sick and tired of contacting the guards.”