Stamullen playground group hand in petition
MEMBERS of the Stamullen Needs A Playground (SNAP) submitted a petition to the local area Councillors.
This petition was gathered over a number of weeks by the committee assisted by a number of local volunteers and contained 1,000 signatures.
This number means that over half the adults living in the village have expressed support for this badly needed facility.
The petition itself has called on the council to consider a variation of the County Development Plan to enable developer McGarrell Reilly to free up a piece of land for a playground.
This comes on the back of the committee exploring a number of avenues to obtain land for the project, including heavily advertising the Council’s Expression of Interest process undertaken in February and March of this year and coordinating a meeting between local residents, Councillors and the developer McGarrell Reilly .
Stamullen Needs A Playground has been in existence for three years now, and the last remaining barrier to providing the amenity remains a piece of land.
‘We would like to commend Meath County Council for committing a significant amount of money to the project should land become available, and the petition underlines the need to seriously consider all options to provide an area to build it.
‘We feel that our area is lagging behind other parts of Meath, particularly as there are seven playgrounds in the Navan area alone,’ they state.
‘In addition to this, a playground has recently opened in Lobinstown, an area with a population signifcantly lower than Stamullen; in fact there are more children aged under twelve in Stamullen than the entire population of Lobinstown.‘Stamullen Needs A Playground would like to thank those who helped us collect signatures by knocking on doors, and those who signed the petition and gave us great support and words of encouragement.
‘We would also like to thank our local area councillors for being supportive of us in this project, particularly Darren O’Rourke, Alan Tobin and Claire O’Driscoll.’