In the Liberties, a soccer pitch mostly funded by the council is closed to local sports clubs

It’s a quiet Sunday evening on 23 March on Basin View in The Liberties.

The only noises are the joyous squeals and shouts of kids playing football in a cramped tarmac yard.

They have climbed over a fence to get into this area and are pounding the ball back and forth. The yard is small and the ball regularly flies out onto the street, where a passerby will kick it back to cheers of appreciation.

Just across the road is a small astro pitch, and around the corner, on Long’s Place, is a full-sized astro football pitch belonging to CBS James’s Street.

This large pitch – built primarily with money from the council – is locked away behind an iron gate. There are no children playing on it.

Dublin City Council paid €125,000 in installments in 2017 and 2018 for the full-sized pitch, according to a February email from a council staffer sent to local Labour Councillor Darragh Moriarty.

That’s most of the total cost of €150,000 to €160,000 – the rest was covered by an “anonymous benefactor”, the email said.

Given the funding, Dublin City Council has staked a claim in deciding who can use it.

“There was an expectation that the pitch would be made available to local sports clubs,” a council spokesperson says. “DCC [Dublin City Council] considers that this pitch should be made available to local sports clubs.”

CBS James’s Street has not responded to queries sent by email on 19 March, or a follow-up email and two phone calls, asking why the pitch is not available for use by local sports clubs and how the situation might be resolved.

Lack of pitches in the area

Not far from where the kids were playing that Sunday evening in the tiny tarmac yard on Basin View, another group of kids was having a kickabout on a small rundown tarmac pitch at the Basin Street flats.

Adam Mulligan, father of one of them, was in there with them. Kids in this area “basically have nothing” in terms of sports facilities, he says.

Moriarty, the Labour councillor, says the lack of good facilities in the area means locals have to make do with what’s available in the council housing stock.

But these pitches are really only intended for kickabouts, and are not adequate replacement for proper sports facilities, he says.

There are pitches at Basin View flats, behind Vicar Street, in Pimlico, at St Catherine’s Community Centre, and at the F2 Centre in Rialto.

The council is slated to develop a municipal pitch at the former St Teresa’s Gardens site, which would include football facilities. It is also working on plans for a new full-sized pitch at Marrowbone Lane. But they don’t exist yet.

The group Sportings Liberties has for years been pushing for better facilities in the area. And last year, five football clubs got together to form the Liberties Football Alliance, to push for improved football facilities in the area.

The lack of sports facilities has left some kids at loose ends, and meant that they’ve fallen into anti-social and even criminal behaviour, says Damien Farrell, president of the Liberties Football Alliance.

“We haven’t had the facilities for a long time, so you could probably say the worst consequences of not having facilities are manifesting themself in the behaviors of young people in the Dublin 8 area now,” says Farrell.

Moriarty, the Labour councillor, said that getting more young people in the area involved with organised sport for longer would have a positive impact on social cohesion and would stop kids from going down the path to antisocial and criminal behaviour.

The idea of “unlocking” the pitch

Although the council funded the large astro pitch at CBS James’s Street, it has never been opened up for community access – aside from letting other schools use it during school hours, says Moriarty, the Labour councillor.

Council managers raised the idea recently, though, during discussions about a plan to regenerate the Basin Street flats.

At the 15 January meeting of the Central Area Committee, Moriarty opposed the plan to remove the tarmac pitch at the flats as part of the regeneration.

Gareth Rowan, project manager for the regeneration, defending the planned removal, started listing off other planned and existing pitches in the area, including at CBS James’s Street nearby.

The council should look at how “we can unlock those pitches for Sporting Liberties or Sporting Alliance groups”, Rowan said.

When the plans for the Basin Street flats regeneration moved from this area committee to the February monthly meeting of the full council, the issue of the pitch as part of that development came up again.

The local councillors proposed a motion to amend the plans, to “provide for a larger enclosed Muti-Use Games Area (MUGA) – at least 500-600sqm in size”. The full council backed this amended version of the plan.

But the idea of “unlocking” the CBS James’s Street pitches too has persisted.

Mulligan, the dad kicking the ball around with kids on that recent Sunday at the Basin Street pitch, says he thinks the school’s astro should be open to the community.

Especially since kids are already climbing over the fence and sneaking through the gaps to play on it anyway, he says.

Barriers and solutions

Moriarty, the Labour councillor, followed up on the idea with the council by email, and received the February reply.

When the larger pitch was built, funding was not available to install lighting, it said. “This obviously limited the usage of the facility,” it said.

“Local access outside of school hours was not a condition of the DCC funding but there was an expectation that such use would be facilitated if and when lighting was installed,” it said.

The council’s local area office is in favour of putting in lighting – “subject to funding” – and opening up the pitch to local sports clubs, the email says.

“There is no indication however, following talks with the Principal, that the School supports such a proposal at this time,” it says.

Although the school has not responded to queries about that, Moriarty, as well as Farrell, of the Liberties Football Alliance, says they believe the school has concerns around the security of the pitch.

And the potential for antisocial and criminal behaviour to take place there if it were opened up outside of school hours, Moriarty and Farrell say.

It’s not clear exactly how this situation might be resolved, they say. Putting in floodlights would be a first step.

And perhaps an arrangement could be found in which the school could make a deal with an organisation or individual that they trusted to act as a keyholder to open up the pitch for local clubs on certain days at particular times, they said.

However, the council does not have much leverage to push the school to work towards such an agreement.

When it provided funding for the pitch, it did not stipulate in its agreement with the school that the pitch should be open for community access, said the email to Moriarty.

In response to a query about this, a council spokesperson said, “There was an expectation that the pitch would be made available to local sports clubs.”

This seems like “almost negligence” that the council would rely on an expectation that the pitch would be open to the public rather than having it in writing, says Moriarty.