REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE OFFICIAL OPENING OF ST. CATHERINE’S COMMUNITY SPORTS CENTRE
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE OFFICIAL OPENING OF ST. CATHERINE’S COMMUNITY SPORTS CENTRE AND FOYER PROJECT
Dia dhíbh a cháirde.
I am delighted to be here on this special day to officially open St. Catherine’s Community Sports Centre and Foyer Project. My thanks to Gearóid Ó Meachair, Director of Development at Cara Housing Association for inviting me to this day when we celebrate the achievements of a formidable partnership between St. Catherine’s Combined Community Group, Cara Housing Association and Dublin City Council. I’m particularly glad to see Minister of State Ahern is here today for I know that his Department has been very supportive of this project.
Together, that powerful combination of community association, local authority, central government and voluntary housing sector have, between them, created a vital new community resource here in Marrowbone Lane. Its focus is on our young people, on giving them the best chance to become the very best they can be, so that they live lives of real fulfillment and responsible citizenship. Many things can conspire to rob young people of achieving their fullest potential. There are quite a few predators out there hell bent on diminishing them as human beings rather than building them up and fully revealing their potential. Each life that is wasted in underachievement for whatever reason is a huge loss to the individual and to the rest of society.
That is why this place with its nurturing environment, its supports and its youth focused structure is so important. It will change lives, create opportunities, build up individuals and through them build up a healthy, resilient, effective community.
The idea began locally quite a few years ago and it has been a very testing long road to this day so for the hardworking, dedicated members of St. Catherine’s Combined Communities Group this is a day of righteous pride and satisfaction. Our country owes an unpayable debt to the thousands of people who undertake voluntary community building and development activities. Your work breathes life and hope, energy and strength into community and country. It is a powerful and necessary antidote to the forces which can overwhelm us, from drug and alcohol abuse to family dysfunction and homelessness, from literacy problems and early school leaving to chronic underachievement.
You have become very expert in constructing partnerships that help you to deliver vital, life-enhancing community services like this. It is a credit to the local community that you have been able to bring on board partners of such standing as Dublin City Council and Cara Ireland Housing Association.
So congratulations and thanks to everyone associated with Ireland’s first Foyer and community sports center. When this building was being built I am sure it needed scaffolding for quite a while before it was finished. In the same way we human beings need a similar kind of structure surrounding us until we are able to stand fully alone, confident in our talents, sufficiently skilled to be contributors to our society.
The Foyer is such a structure, safe, comfortable, welcoming and challenging, offering scope for further education and training, working with the young people to transcend life’s difficulties and to let their light shine.
Dublin City Council deserve thanks for providing the site - the former Player Wills factory, which is a very familiar Dublin landmark. The new facilities, foyer, community centre and leisure facilities are impressive by any standard. I hope the young people who use them will vindicate the faith of all those who have created them by using them well to make their own lives as impressive and as strong as possible. No matter how tough their life’s journey has been, this place tells them very loudly that there is help, hope and company on that journey and the destination can be radically changed.
Is iontach an obair atá ar siúl agaibh agus gúim rath Dé air sa todhchaí. Go raibh maith agaibh.