A number of Dublin working class communities have united to fight council plans to close public swimming pools that are a vital leisure and fitness resource in their areas.
Dublin City Council is due to close three public Swimming pools at Coolock, Crumlin and Seán McDermott Street in the north inner city in the late summer.
The City manager John Tierney has cited the government’s need to find €3 billion ‘savings’ by the end of 2010 as the reason the pools are threatened. Tierney initially stated that the council would continue to seek ways of keeping the amenities open but that the €600,000 the council had found to run the pools for the first half of this year would only last until the end of the summer.
Dates have now been set to close the pools with the Seán Mac Dermott street pool scheduled to end operation on August 27.
In response community activists have mobilised. Joe Mooney of the “Save Our Swimming Pools” campaign in the north inner city stated: ‘This pool has been here since the 1970s, and has served the community well. Since the 1980s we have seen major housing schemes demolished and rebuilt and huge unemployment due to the closure of the docks. The heroin crisis has also devastated this area but through all this, the swimming pool was always a shining light in our community – something positive amongst the deprivation while there was little else around.’
In the coming weeks, a series of public meetings will be held in the areas surrounding the pools. The purpose of these meetings will be to inform residents of the proposed closures and the efforts to date to prevent them. A build up of support for future protests and new ideas for campaigning will also be sought from the meetings.
Save Our Swimming Pools spokesperson Sian Muldowney: ‘We are determined to keep our pool open, and we are prepared to work hard to make it a success. We really need Dublin City Council to respond in a positive manner, and start to work with the community and not against us. In the year that Dublin is the European Capital of Sport it is shameful that we are even in this predicament.’
Independent Dublin city councillor Cieran Perry said the working-class communities in which the pools are located had few enough leisure facilities without taking these resources away. He added that the cost of keeping the pools open would be minimal as local people were willing to manage them.
