Mr. Cormac Ó Donnchú:

A Chathaoirligh agus a bhaill coiste, my name is Cormac Ó Donnchú, cathaoirleach Chumann Lúthchleas Gael Na Fianna, and I am joined for this presentation by our former cathaoirleach, Bernie Caffrey. Ar son Chumann Lúthchleas Gael Na Fianna, gabhaimid ár mbuíochas libh as ucht an cuireadh a thabhairt dúinn teacht chuig Tithe an Oireachtais agus ár mbarúil a roinnt de MetroLink agus den bhealach is dealraithí a roghnófar atá curtha chun cinn ag Bonneagar Iompair Éireann. Na Fianna is supportive of a metro rail service for the north side of Dublin and acknowledges the benefits it could bring to our community. However, we believe the construction and development of such a rail service must be balanced and proportionate. In particular, its construction and operation should endeavour to minimise the disruption it brings to people, including to their day-to-day activities and their physical and social environment as well as the social infrastructure. We firmly believe that the current proposal for the emerging preferred engineering route and the tunnelling site is neither reasonable nor proportionate, especially when one considers the major and truly adverse implications it will have on our club community, the adjoining schools, Home Farm FC and the broader Glasnevin and St. Mobhi Road community.

As we often experience difficulty relating to the scale of the effect of Na Fianna's activities on our local community, I wish to take some time to familiarise the members of the committee with the activities of our vibrant and unique urban Gaelic community. Since our foundation in 1955, many committed and diligent members of our community have dedicated a large part of their lives to build a self-reliant, volunteer-based, inclusive Gaelic community. The fruit of their diligent work has delivered a unique and extremely successful sporting and cultural institution that is known today as Cumann Lúthchleas Gael Na Fianna.

Based in the heart of Dublin 9, just 3,500 m from the city centre, Na Fianna is now one of the largest participatory sports, cultural and community-based organisations in Europe. As of April 2018, we have 2,936 members and an additional 1,044 registered parents, combining to deliver us a community of 3,980 active participants. From a sporting perspective, we field 166 teams across all our codes of indigenous Gaelic games, that is, Gaelic football, ladies' Gaelic football, hurling, camogie, handball and rounders. Our ethos is about local community engagement and inclusiveness. Our goal is to have a team for everyone regardless of age, gender or sporting ability in order to maximise participation. Our active members range in age from four to 70. To reflect a growing engagement of young females, I am happy to relate that 40% of our players are female. Our 346 volunteer mentors support our sporting teams. These committed individuals, trained by our club, offer up approximately six to ten hours of their time every week to help bind our community and keep our children and our local community fit and healthy in a positive environment.

As for our cultural activities, our work includes the daily hosting of a bilingual naíonra, or preschool; daily after-school care; weekly Irish language classes; Irish dance classes; public céilithe; and weekly public music sessions, which attract many musicians and singers. Our games, cultural and social activities provide the glue that helps bind our community together.

In addition to our club-organised activities, we host a range of third-party social activities in our clubhouse, including weekly meetings of the Iona Bridge Club, the Corus choral group, arts classes, line dancing classes and a host of community-based events from table quizzes to christenings, communions, birthday parties and funerals. In short, our clubhouse on St. Mobhi Road hosts the full range of life milestone events in our community from cradle to grave.

Our cultural work is beautifully complemented by the very close relationship we enjoy with our nearest neighbours, our adjoining Gaelic-speaking schools of Scoil Mobhí and Scoil Chaitiríona. We work closely and share the use of one another's facilities to create a unique, safe, educational, sporting and cultural Gaelic environment. On every level we breathe the same air. On St. Mobhi Road we have created a unique space, a vibrant breac-Ghaeltacht in which the children of our community have the option to be immersed in a Gaelic-speaking environment from preschool in Tír na nÓg in Na Fianna to primary school in Scoil Mobhí and meánscoil i Scoil Chaitríona. They may follow on to third level education, to Fiontar with our community partners up the road in Dublin City University.

Cumann Lúthchleas Gael Na Fianna is such a unique sporting and cultural creation that it now attracts approximately 20,000 international visitors per annum to experience Gaelic games. They are provided with a unique insight into modern Gaelic culture through the medium of our national games and our club's extensive cultural activities. All the work of our community is underpinned by selfless volunteerism and supported by the work of more than 38 committees or work groups all directed by our 15-person elected volunteer executive committee.

St. Mobhi Road and our site reverberates each day with community activity from 6 a.m., when our club gym opens, through to 9 a.m., when the grounds facilitate the arrival of students from Scoil Chaitríona and Scoil Mobhí. During the day, the club welcomes international visitors amid the students of some of the ten local primary schools with which our club-funded coaches work every week. Most importantly, every evening and weekend, our grounds are filled with the laughter and banter of our young enjoying one another's company in a healthy environment.

In order to maintain our level of activity, we are currently required to use 14 facilities at different locations throughout our community. The only one of these facilities to which we have unrestricted access in the long term is our site on St. Mobhi Road. Prior to the TII announcement, we had struggled with a lack of access to green space in our community as our facilities are already at breaking point. Unfortunately, the emerging preferred route proposed by TII for MetroLink involves requisitioning these grounds and shutting down our activities on St. Mobhi Road for the complete duration of the construction project. Our site is proposed to be the first to be lost to public use and the last to be restored. If the proposal proceeds in its current form, it will have a calamitous effect on the future of Cumann Lúthchleas Gael Na Fianna. Our removal from the centre of our community will have serious long-term implications for our community. It has the potential to negate years of careful and diligent work of generations of volunteers and social entrepreneurs. It will transform a space which has been lovingly nurtured by generations of volunteers as a remarkable cultural and community centre into a construction site of an unprecedented scale. It will silence the heartbeat of our local community.

The planned tunnel-boring site will effectively close down the most used gathering place of our community, leaving it silent. A generation of children will be deprived of an opportunity to engage in healthy activity within their local community during their most formative years. The seven small culturally aligned enterprises that operate from our clubhouse will face a challenge of a scale they may not survive. The livelihood of the individuals from these ventures will be placed in jeopardy and the part-time work of 60 others will be lost. In effect, our club facilities on St. Mobhi Road, that wondrous hive of sustainable community, cultural and healthy sporting activity, will be silenced. We have made these views known to TII and will document them in greater detail in our submission to the public consultation.

To reiterate our core point, Na Fianna is supportive of a metro rail service for the north side of Dublin and we acknowledge the benefit it could bring to our community. However, its construction and development must be balanced and proportionate. We firmly believe the current proposal and the tunnelling site are neither reasonable nor proportionate and will have truly adverse implications for our club members and our wider community of north Dublin. Go raibh míle maith agaibh.