Address of Bishop Christy Jones

Today we thank the Committee of Merville Youth and Community Centre for inviting us to the official opening and blessing of this beautifully refurbished Community Centre. Indeed our hearts go out in praise and congratulations to this most competent and most dedicated of committees - o its chairman Bill Divers, to its members Ann Fox, Ella Flynn, Kathleen McLoughlin, Helen Waters and to its President Fr. Alan Conway.

I believe this community and indeed the whole of Sligo owes you a great debt of gratitude not only for managing and maintaining the centre and the grounds of Merville but for planning and refurbishing the Centre so beautifully. In the process you have been able to reorganize space within the centre and so provide state of the art facilities for preschool and school children in your Centre.

Gratitude to Government and Government Minister

After the Committee we must put on record the gratitude of the Community for the magnificent grant of €743,000 which came from the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform. And we can be absolutely certain that our Sligo Minister of State Dr. Seamus Devins played a major part in securing this huge grant. With you Dr. Devins we thank your colleagues Eamonn Scanlon and John Perry and indeed members of Sligo Corporation for their support all the way.

The Importance of Community and Social Facilities

This refurbished Centre represents months and years of planning, worry and anxiety of the Committee as it met on many nights through winter and summer planning and securing the funding necessary. It involved meeting with officials of the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, with people like Dr. Devins, T.D.’S and Councillors, with Architects and Contractors, with members of Pobal and the County Child Care Committee.

The Importance of Community Facilities

It is so important that all of us recognize the importance of community recreational and educational facilities in every big housing estate.

Surely no one at national or local level can fail to see the consequences of forcing hundreds of families to live in huge housing estates without the community and recreational facilities that young people need so desperately. Look at all the huge estates in Dublin, in Limerick, in Galway and even in our own town that have become breeding grounds for delinquency and crime because there were no facilities to challenge the energies of the youth and provide our young people with the opportunities for growth physically, socially and indeed morally. Surely the big developers who built those huge housing estates for local authorities and who are guaranteed huge profits on completion of their project have a responsibility to invest some of their profits in facilities and services that are so essential for the families and individuals who will live in those estates.

Many of us can remember trying to persuade the powers that be in Sligo not to build the final phase of a huge estate and to use the land instead for social and recreational facilities. How many millions of euro would be saved on delinquency and crime if much more had been invested all over the country on services so essential for promoting health and happiness in any community or estate.

Animals can be put in sheds and fed for the market. But human beings have more than just accommodation needs and we neglected these needs at our peril.

Contribution of the Parish and the Diocese in the Past

In the past the only social and recreational facilities were for the most part provided by the parish or diocese. We think of the facilities here in Merville. Fr. Gerry Donnelly who achieved so much for youth in Sligo during the 1950’s, 1960’s, and 1970’s was sent by the late Bishop Hanly to the Mother House of the Nazareth Sisters in Hammersmith, London to secure land for facilities in this community. He spent five days in London and then on the 14 September 1961 the Mother Superior donated this land and its facilities for the services of the community. Sligo owes a huge debt of gratitude to the Nazareth Sisters. However parishes will be totally unable to provide those kind of facilities into the future. The National Government, the local Authorities and indeed the big contractors must ensure that all future housing estates will have the facilities they require. Indeed we can see how families living beside each other remain strangers for years because they have no community centre where they can meet and plan for themselves and their children.

Conclusion

I wish to finish by returning again to the chairman Bill Divers, to the President Fr. Alan Conway and committee members Ann Fox, Ella Flynn, Kathleen McLoughlin and Helen Waters. Heartiest congratulations on a magnificent achievement. We sincerely hope that the children of this community today and their children and their children’s children will always remember with gratitude and affection the sacrifices that you made as you invested so generously of your energy and your effort of your time and of your talents in the planning and provision of these state of the art facilities.