They want to fence off part of it, they say, to keep football-playing kids and their ball on the green, safely separated from the speeding cars and scramblers.
The sports pitches are long gone. The playground too. The community centre burned in 2021 and the council has left it a charred husk. “It’s so disheartening.”
The nearest one is in Father Collins Park, a 26-minute walk with a busy road in between, says Ciara Niamh Browne, a member of the residents’ association.
There are only enough spaces at early learning and childcare centres for roughly one in four children, a report by the group Young People at Risk has found.
Council chief Owen Keegan said he was reluctant for the council to take on a new role. “When we get so much criticism for not doing the things we have responsibility for.”
“It’s a great business to do, but it just financially isn’t rewarding,” says Zoe Poynter, who ran the play café, Little Monkeys in Killester for four years, before closing down in 2017.
But not all of them have been included in an online database of missing children that the Gardaí at first said shows “all missing children in Ireland”.
