Neilstown residents still have no library, medical centre or sports facilities, writes Kitty Holland
On the green fields opposite Liffey Valley's retail parks, two O'Callaghan Properties signs are erected by the road.
"Future Bus Terminal", reads one. "Site For Offices, Civic Buildings and Medical Centre", announces another. Almost a decade after they were erected, they are faded and even a little battered. The site remains vacant.
"People did feel very let down, especially after all the time and effort that had been put into the meetings and consultations," says Neilstown resident Phyllis Forte, driving past the site last week. "There had been such hope that things were going to change." Forte, who lives in the Moorfield area of Neilstown, represented residents at numerous meetings with Owen O'Callaghan about the proposed amenities in the late 1990s. She says people accepted the disruption during the construction of the enormous Liffey Valley shopping centre, about a 15-minute walk from most front doors, because they had been promised that they too would benefit from O'Callaghan Properties' footprint.
Nine years on, however, there is still no library, medical centre, sports facilities or even a reasonable choice of grocery shops serving the 15,000 or so people living in this sprawling wilderness of houses in north Clondalkin.
"It's a case of half a loaf being better than none, but it's not the full loaf we were promised or even the half we'd have preferred," says Forte. "We were very badly served then - and we still are."
What does serve the community is a small enclave of cheerless shops, known as Neilstown Shopping Centre. Among them are a bookmaker's, a Chinese takeaway, a post office, a butcher's, a Londis convenience store and a branch of St Vincent de Paul.
Young women with children were the main customers on a sunny afternoon last week. Asked what they thought of facilities, all who spoke said there was "nothing for the kids".
"We need playgrounds. It's ridiculous there's just one tiny one in the whole area," said one woman with two young children in school uniforms. "We've no sports facilities, apart from the fields."
Another said the only activity in the area for her 10-year-old daughter was "the majorettes' class, but that's only once a week. And my older one is starting his summer holidays now and I don't know what I'm going to do with him for three months."
Another young woman carrying her three-year-old son on her hip spoke of the lack of choice in grocery shopping and the absence of anywhere to buy clothes.
The physical environment of 12 local authority estates and four private housing estates in Neilstown/Rowlagh has improved somewhat in the past five years, since the area was designated for the Rapid (Revitalising Areas through Planning, Investment and Development) programme.
Rapid targets the 45 most disadvantaged areas in the State. Small trees now line most estate avenues, while footpaths and open areas are well maintained. One is struck, however, by the amount of rubbish, and also by how relatively poor people clearly are.
This is a very young, dependent community, characterised, according to the National Educational Welfare Board, by early school-leaving and high unemployment (9.5 per cent). About 33 per cent of the population are aged 15 or younger and about 20 per cent of households are headed by a lone parent - twice the national average. A 2002 study of the area, published under the auspices of the National Development Plan, said only 2 per cent of the adult population had remained in the education system up to or beyond the age of 20.
It is also the area in the State with the lowest voter turnout.
Back in her kitchen, Forte tells of the great hope people had for a while in 1999 that things were going to change. From a file, she pulls out a letter addressed to her from Owen O'Callaghan and dated November 2nd, 1999.
Having thanked her for "taking an hour out to meet me at Rowlagh parish church on Thursday night", O'Callaghan - whose shopping centre had opened a year previously - goes on to tell her of his plans for the "community block close to the Coldcut Road" - on the site that now accommodates only those two faded signs.
This community block would include "a restaurant, Fás training centre, a medical centre, library and small offices", he wrote. There would also be "an oratory, as we discussed on Thursday night last", and an "historical trail around the perimeter of the site depicting the historical events in the Lucan/Clondalkin area".
A spokesman for O'Callaghan Properties said the commitment to build civic amenities had been "genuine", but An Bord Pleanála had overturned the plans.
"Currently a local area plan is being put together in consultation with residents. Liffey Valley is now a designated town centre and the facilities will be incorporated into that," he said.
People like the Liffey Valley shopping centre, Forte says, though she adds that most of the shops are out of the price range of most Neilstown residents. "No, it's for people in their big cars on the M50," she says.