Near Blanchardstown, a housing estate has made a neighbourhood green into a playspace for kids – but want council help to make it safe

Last Friday, Joanna Smith was outside her home talking about the two small greens in front of her at Sheepmoor View when a ball flew off and onto the road and a young boy ran after it, oblivious to an oncoming car.

The car slowed and stopped, this time. But the threat from vehicles keeps parents around here vigilant.

“Whenever I hear a noise, I rush out,” says Stacy Costigan, who lives in one of the two-storey pebbledash homes that lie to the west of the green. “All parents do.”

For the last few years, residents around Sheepmoor View near Blanchardstown have banded together to make the two green spaces at the heart of their community a place for the neighbourhood’s kids to play.

Mostly, they’ve made improvements themselves.

But they’re still worried, they say, about the risk from scramblers and fast cars that rush past the green – and want Fingal County Council to put up fences to stop the balls and the kids rushing out into the road.

At a recent meeting of the Blanchardstown-Mulhuddart, Castleknock, Ongar Area Committee, Natalie Treacy, a Sinn Féin councillor, put forward a motion asking the council to do just that.

Parks manager Oliver Hoey at first seemed wary of putting up a fence. But later said that marking off some of the area should be possible.

A neighbourhood effort

Decades back, kids around Sheepmoor View had loads of green spaces to play on.

Costigan recalls a time when the houses across the street did not exist. “It was all a huge football pitch,” she said.

Smith points to another area, now all houses and cars. “That used to be the bee field. That was just a huge field, we used to go there and catch bees in it.”

But with each passing year, and more and more homes, the play areas were lost.

At the council meeting, Treacy, the Sinn Féin councillor, who lived in the area when she was younger, said she remembers a playground. “When the infill houses were built, they lost the playground and they never got it replaced since.”

Costigan says she thinks that, of the estates in the area, only Sheepmoor really has this issue of a lack of play space. “Whitestown nearby has an astro and Mountview is close to the football pitch.”

Every evening, about 20 or so children, aged between 8 and 12 years old, girls and boys, gather on one of the two patches of land in Sheepmoor View to play football.

Last Friday, some had already pulled on football jerseys and shoes. Others are still in school uniforms. Children in the area are football mad, say parents.

The greens are small, says Costigan, whose children use the grassy spaces a lot. “But it’s something.”

Costigan has a small astroturf in her backyard with a child-sized goal post for the younger children. On Friday, kids filtered into her home at snack time.

Hers is the designated “snack home”, she says. “The kids come in to drink water and get their knick-knacks.”

But mostly, they’ll be outside, whatever the weather. “The kids love the place,” says Costigan. “They can’t get enough of it. They don’t come in until late in the night.”

Kids started to play out on the greens a few years ago. About three years back, Peter Logue built them their first goal post. Soon, he added a second.

“I did it for the children,” said Logue, a lorry driver. “They love playing football.”

The kids alternate between the two patches of land. Every few weeks, the goalposts are moved so grass on one side can rest and recover.

Terry Flynn, another resident of Sheepmoor View, makes sure the grass is neat and cut.

“I started about two years ago,” he says. “I kept the grass short for the kids to play.”

“The kids used to play there before I started cutting the grass, but they didn’t play as much,” said Flynn. “But once I started cutting the grass, they play every day and they enjoy it.”

He even replants grass if it needs it on one side, he said.

Making it safer

The streets around here have a 30km speed limit and ramps. But scramblers and some car drivers don’t respect those, said Treacy, the Sinn Féin councillor, at the meeting.

Scramblers fly up Sheepmoor Avenue across the top of the greens, and through Fortlawn, said Treacy. “So they’re going back and forward.”

Flynn said that scramblers aren’t as much of an issue as they used to be. “Since we started taking care of the place, they don’t come as often.”

And there’s not much that can be done about them, says Treacy. “In the meantime, we can do these small things”

Those small things, Logue says, include a fresh coat of paint for the ramps so they’re visible. “We can hear cars hit the brake once they’re on top of the ramps.”

A railing around the park, the parents say, would also help keep the kids safe.

Costigan, with the help of her sisters Mandy White and Joanna Smith, has drawn up a petition.

She wants to submit it to Fingal County Council, she says, and neighbours seem onboard. “Everybody said, ‘Stacy when you come with the petition, we’ll sign it.’”

Logue says he thinks any railings need to be high. “The fence should be tall enough so the kids don’t jump out.” But “with a gap in it so the kids can come in and out”, he says.

At the area committee meeting on 28 September, Hoey, the council parks manager, appeared at first reluctant about the idea of putting up fencing. “If we start fencing, where do we finish?”

“We really do not have resources to start fencing off areas. In fact, we’re trying to open them up again to increase permeability through our open spaces on our estates,” he said.

But they could maybe fence off one part of the area, he said. “So you’re kind of making a small play space for the kids.”

Treacy says she doesn’t think it would make the estate less permeable. “We aren’t looking for it to be fully fenced off. It’s not like we’re taking away the whole green space.”

Two council officials have since visited the greens and she is optimistic that they’ll do something, she says. “They said they’ll come back ‘shortly’.”

She sees any fence as a mid-term solution, she said. “The neighbourhood would love a proper football pitch or a games area for the kids to play on.”