Getting a place inside the gates

Halloween 1995. Eddie Kershaw had been working in London and was home in Ballyfermot, Dublin, for a visit. Just two hours after he had arrived, a riot broke out, with gardai in full riot gear sweeping through the area. Eddie was close to being arrested, only that his mother intervened.

In the days before the Celtic Tiger, Ballyfermot was showing many signs of social stress: car thefts, litter, drug dealing, vandalism. Halloween 1995 was when it boiled over.

Reaction was predictably extreme. The area was condemned as a no-go slum and enclave of the damned, and its inhabitants rather less than human.

Eddie Kershaw, with the benefit of working abroad, decided to fight back. He organised a group, called round to houses in the neighbourhood and Gallanstown Vision was born.

They started to clean up the litter and broken glass, got the local kids to sign a pledge against vandalism and put out the message that it was time to reclaim dignity and self-worth.

A key issue was that the local people would have to do this for themselves. Professionals who live outside the area finish work around 5 p.m., and many facilities close at that time. But it's around 10 p.m. that you need things like community centres and meeting rooms open.

Another big point was horses. Many of the people in the area are descendants of dray-drivers and jarveys. Horses are in their blood, and they need a place to keep them.

Horses also offer real job opportunities - there is a shortage of grooms and stable workers throughout Europe. Working with horses, calculating feed prices and other costings, can give unemployed young people an interest and a reason to return to education.

The official line is that horses and racing pigeons are banned in local authority owned houses, and if you cannot afford to get somewhere else, that's tough. Added to that, the Control of Horses Act was being passed, which allowed animals to be impounded.

That new horse-control legislation was Kershaw's first encounter with a law, and he knew he wanted to change it.

The other thing he was encountering was the political system, where parties can muscle in on local projects to claim credit for themselves - and sometimes jobs for their supporters. He is implacably opposed to this.

It's no ordinary determination to sleep in a van in the field beside horses to save them from being impounded, and to make sure that any project for them puts local people first. That's what Kershaw did.

In the last constituency-boundary revision, part of the area was taken in to the Taoiseach's constituency, and that led to funding for the Cherry Orchard Equestrian Project.

Eddie Kershaw had come to official notice, not always favourable, since he disagreed with official thinking, but the Ballyfermot Local Area Partnership offered him a course on the community development and leadership programme it was running in NUI Maynooth. It was there that the idea of studying law matured. As he says, "I learned that the people who know the law and have the words can always sell you out." So he signed on in Crumlin College, Dublin, for the one-year course in law, including contract and constitutional.

It was a new world. Eddie is the eldest of six, and at the age of 15 his father had brought him down to the local coal-yard for his first job, chopping logs and loading hundredweight bags of coal on to lorries. Small wonder he soon left for England.

But life was taking a new direction, and after Crumlin, the Ballyfermot Partnership told him about the Trinity Access Programme. The initiative was started in 1995 in the St Andrew's Resource Centre on Dublin's Pearse Street. The original 20 places were increased to 24, and the best tribute to the project is that only one person didn't stay the course. The TAP now has 17 students in Trinity, two in St Patrick's, Drumcondra, and one in Maynooth.

One of the local people who lobbied for the project, Patricia Boucher, was on the pilot TAP last year and has now gone on to study sociology and politics.

Eddie Kershaw is full of praise for TAP co-ordinator Maureen Dunne for her vision and encouragement. And for her realism. Students were left in no doubt about the level of commitment required, and childminding was a problem for many participants. They had to learn about deadlines, time management, writing methods and computer skills with tutor Wendy Elliott.

Kershaw became the class representative on the TCD students' union, still hardly able to believe he was inside a place he had formerly viewed only with resentment and suspicion. Those from a more privileged background never think of that gulf, when you know your place is outside the railings.

At the end of the TAP year, there were three places on offer for law. The interview was tough, but fair. Kershaw is particularly grateful to lecturer Ivana Bacik for her understanding and support. He'll need it for the long course ahead.

But already there has been one bonus. A girl from Cherry Orchard came to congratulate him, and confessed that, because of his example, she had decided to stay on in school and do her Leaving Cert: a role model is having an effect.

Eddie Kershaw, in his turn, is grateful for the support of his mother Kathleen. He quotes Bob Dylan:

I just wouldn't have a clue,

Anyway it wouldn't ring true,

If not for you.