Duagh doing it by themselves as they fundraise € 500,000
Damian Stack spoke with members of the Duagh Sports Centre Committee about their progess and their plans for the future
YOU know the score by now. Three years into the recession and the notion of self reliance and of fiscal discipline has been well and truly hammered home by politicians and media alike. If we’re going to get ourselves out of the hole we’re in, then we’re all going to have to come together as a nation, as communities.
When faced with the might of the troika this might seem at times like a nebulous concept, but consider for a moment, if you will, the progress being made by the Duagh Sports Centre Committee in the last three years – in the teeth of the great recession.
Consider the funds raised, consider the community spirt and the sense of purpose engendered by the passionate advocacy of those who, instead of sitting around waiting for things to happen around them, decided to make them happen instead.
In the three years since they began the project almost half a million euro has been raised, foundations have been set, walls blocked and a roof put in place. “Everything has gone according to plan really,” committee member Anne Scanlon says.
“People have the perception that it’s going slowly, but it’s going slowly because we’re doing it as we have the money for it. We’re not borrowing. The last thing we want to do is have a huge debt in the parish after we’re finished. It’s going slowly because we collect the money for a phase and when we have the price of a phase we complete it and then we gather money again and do it again and that’s the way we’re doing it.”
Fellow committee memeber Tommy Healy says that the project is now halfway towards completion. “We’re more than halfways there on the project. We have raised I suppose and spent somewhere in the region of € 490,000 or € 500,000. That includes grants from North and East Kerry development,” he says.
“We’d be very frustrated as a committee that we can’t drive on and finish it. We’ve fierce determination to finish it, but we’re tied by the state of the nation, the state of the finances. We’re reluctant to borrow given the state of the economy at the moment. We could breeze ahead, but we don’t want to saddle the parish with debt and no way of paying it off.”
To have raised what they have is no mean achievement and given that before the crash of 2007 projects such as Duagh’s would only need raise something like 25% of the funding locally – the other 75% of the funding would have come from National Lottery funding and various grants – the fact that Duagh have raised 50% of the funding themselves speaks to their determination and imagination.
“Well over four hundred families committed themselves to giving a fiver a week for three years and that was our basic funding,” committee member and parish priest Pat Moore says. “We went back again and we were hugely encouraged, got a great shot in the arm, at the amount of people who were willing to go the extra mile with us and have committed themselves to giving for the next two years as well.”
Along with the standing orders the committee have endeavoured to raise funds through concerts and a sponsor a block scheme, which saw committee members go outside the parish in search of sponsorship. “We were in Moyvane, Athea, we were in Ballylongford, Asdee, Lisselton, Mountcollins, Lixnaw, Mountcoal, you name it we were there,” Healy says.
“It’s important to thank the people of the parish who have stood behind us for so long and then the people from other parishes who were in the sponsor a block scheme.”
The big thing the committee are hoping for is the return of National Lottery funding for projects such as theirs. Minister Jimmy Deenihan is their point man for this, according to Scanlon. “He still says he will [ help them get the funding] and he’s still very positive that we will get funding whenever there is funding. So we’d be very hopeful that he will stay true to his word.
“It all depends on the funding. If we got the funding we’d be finished in nine months. The National Lottery is the big thing. Even if we don’t get government funding we’ll finish it. It might take longer than we’d hoped, but we will finish it.”
It really has been a whole community effort according to Moore. “We’ve been very lucky in the people that have worked with us. We’ve stayed with local people, they’ve put tremendous commitment into it.
“There’s a great sense that people are looking forward to this and proud of it and proud of the achievement.
“Very few communties have done what we’re doing. This Christmas hundreds came to the live crib here and so many of them just stood in awe and looked at what was done since last year. It made a big impression,” he says.
They’re hoping it’ll make an even bigger impression in Duagh in the years to come. Given what they’ve done so far you’d put your house on it.
Needless to say donations would be warmly received by the committee.