Madam, – A perusal of the archives shows that on an almost annual basis, residents in the Croke Park vicinity have raised their grievances in relation to the lack of consultation between those that manage the stadium and us – their neighbours. These grievances mostly relate to the anti-social consequences of littering, noise pollution, non-residents occupying residents parking spaces, roads being blocked off and friends/family having difficulty visiting at weekends when events are going on. This hardly constitutes a charter for grumps. It is certainly not Nimbyism.
Notwithstanding that, over the past eight years, we have seen the number of events being hosted by Croke Park expand exponentially. The GAA retains an admirable capacity to put on extravagant shows. Many of us attend and enjoy them, but we are being fenced in for almost half the year at this stage.
The GAA is made up of headquarters and the clubs. The GAA clubs – the heart of the organisation – are present in almost every parish on the island and provide a focus for community values that forms the backbone of the GAA’s history and tradition. We have no quarrel with these great clubs. It is, however, a matter of considerable, continuing regret that at GAA headquarters, the president and stadium management choose to ignore the community values the organisation is meant to represent.
People who think residents are whingebags should either look through newspaper archives to see how long the GAA has chosen to ignore very modest requests from their neighbours. This is not Lansdowne Road – there are no captains of industry here to take matters to the High Court. As a result, we are consistently treated like an inconvenience, an after- thought thrown a scrap or two here or there to keep us quiet. I do not believe that this is good enough and I do not believe the founding fathers of the GAA would approve of their behaviour either. – Yours, etc,