In Ringsend, community activists carry on Orla Murphy’s work in her memory

One night in March 2023, the community activist Orla Murphy phoned Susan Gregg Farrell with an idea.

Murphy had seen a memorial wall in a Cabra GAA club made of marble tiles, Gregg Farrell says. “She said, ‘I’ve sent you pictures. Have a look at it. Come back to me.’”

Gregg Farrell, whose background was in construction, asked what Murphy wanted to do. “And she says, ‘We’re gonna build a wall.’ Okay, Mrs Trump.”

Murphy wanted a wall in the garden and recreational area behind the Ringsend and Irishtown Community Centre featuring plaques to commemorate locals who died, she says.

But Murphy passed away in January, before the wall had happened.

It was a sunny Thursday morning, and Gregg Farrell was standing by the astro-turf pitch around the back of the community centre as she recalled that phone call with Murphy.

She watched as two young men lifted a plank of polished wood onto the raised cedar-chip bed which runs along one of the walls at the back of the centre, next to the Dodder River.

The two men slowly slotted the plank above a large rectangle of wood, about six metres long, which was mounted to the freshly painted white wall.

They were assembling a frame.

This is Ringsend and Irishtown’s own community memorial wall, said Gregg Farrell. “It was Orla’s baby.”

No names had yet been added. Murphy’s would be the first, she said.

A first port of call

The wall is the latest venture by the community group set up in Murphy’s memory, known as the Orla Murphy Project.

Orla Murphy was deeply involved in the community, says Gregg Farrell. “She was a great activist. If something needed doing, you went to Orla.”

She acted as secretary for local campaigns, including one to prevent developers from building a fifteen-storey apartment tower on York Road in 2020, she says.

“And there was another development in front of us on the Cambridge Road, which we objected to,” she says.

That was a plan to build a seven-storey block of build-to-rent apartment blocks, which An Bord Pleanála refused in November 2023, says local Shay Connolly. “Orla Murphy was really instrumental with me on that.”

She was the first port of call on a lot of matters like that, he says. “I engaged with Orla when we were facing a massive problem of gentrification.”

There weren’t a lot of unified bodies to react to major developments, he says. “And we didn’t have any platforms to address any of these issues, and I’d brainstorm with types of community organisations.”

Connolly and Murphy helped to set up both the Ringsend Community Development Group and the Ringsend and Districts Historical Society, he says.

She played a big role in keeping locals connected and abreast of the latest local news via social media forums, Gregg Farrell says.

More than 10 years ago, Murphy and her uncle set up a local Facebook page called Ringsend People at Home and Abroad, Gregg Farrell says. “It was basically to keep people that were still in Ireland and who had left the country in touch with the community.”

“She ruled with an iron fist,” she says. “There was nothing political. You couldn’t advertise or sell. It was just about the community.”

When she passed away, Gregg Farrell was asked to take over as its administrator, she says. “It was constant monitoring. I don’t know how she did that full-time.”

It wasn’t only that page she oversaw, either, Gregg Farrell says. “It was the Ringsend Loved and Lost page, a freecycle page for recycling bits and bobs, and she was working full-time, caring for her mother and father.”

Roll up your sleeves

Gregg Farrell launched the Orla Murphy Project in late February. The first event was a well-being workshop the following month.

The project is next setting its sights on raising the funds for a new community bus for local kids and senior citizens, alongside the community memorial wall, she says.

“After she died, everything, for a while, went up in the air. But it was like she gave me a kick up the ass one night, saying I need to get this wall done,” she says.

The bus is a bit of a ways off, she says, as she watched the two men hammer the final board in place and complete the frame. “That’s after I get this finished and launched.”

This entire wall had been overgrown before she got construction workers from the Sisk Group on board to realise Murphy’s idea, she says. “You couldn’t even see the rose tree or the apple tree.”

That was all cleared out and seating put in, she says. “So at least, when people come, there’s somewhere for them to sit down.”

The plan is that locals can buy a small brass memorial plaque, which is added to the wall, she says. “When the plaques are sold, whatever is left, because this costs a lot to make, 50 percent will go back into the community centre, and the other 50 percent will go into taking our senior citizens out on day trips.”

The wall should fit about 1,000 small plaques, she says. “And in the middle section, we’ll have a design in the centre that Orla came up with, showing an etching of the front of the church and two chimneys.”

Gregg Farrell says Murphy had a simple motto: “There’s no point sitting there and complaining. Roll your sleeves up and get in.”