An experiment currently under way in Tallaght West in Dublin, deserves attention and support. The idea is to take a vision of the future, created by local people, and to turn that vision into reality in ten years. Such experiments have been carried to a conclusion before in this State though in very different settings. For instance, many a rural parish was transformed through the vision of local people as channelled through Muintir na Tire.
Tallaght West - Killinarden, Jobstown, Fettercairn and Brookfield may be very different from the rural parishes of the 1950s and 1960s, but a vision of a better future is as powerful a motivator now as it was then. Those who created that vision held to it in the face of emigration, unemployment and subsistence farming. Now, the people of Tallaght West must hold to their vision in the face of "joyriding", unemployment and subsistence living.
The experiment began more than a year ago and has been nurtured by many local community groups, but especially by the Shanty Educational Project which has run adult education and personal development courses for 2,000 Tallaght people in ten years.
The experiment reached one of its milestones last week when 200 men and women mostly women met in the community centres in Jobstown and Killinarden to articulate their vision of the future. Hanging over the meeting was the shadow of the recent joyriding" incidents which disgusted the overwhelming majority of people in the area and which brought Killinarden a burst of exceptionally bad publicity. So intense has that publicity been, that when a group from the Shanty Educational Project went to the United States recently to raise money for An Cosan, an education, therapy and community centre planed for Jobstown - another vision they discovered to their astonishment that people there had heard of Killinarden and Jobstown - but what they had heard were the reports of "joyriding" and drugtaking.
There was no demand at last week's meeting that the media should not report what happens. There was, however, a challenge to report the good as well as the bad. That, of course, is a very old debate - but to the people of Tallaght West it is a very real one.
The vision articulated at last week's meeting included some elements which were predictable: jobs, sports centres, a frequent bus service, projects to help children who drop out of school, a maternity wing for Tallaght Hospital. It also included elements which might not have been expected: equestrian centres, because youngsters have a passion for horses whether on the hard concrete of the suburbs or the hallowed turf of the Curragh; a youth orchestra; a project to link all the parks and waterways in Tallaght; an aromatherapy and relaxation centre; and a general facelift for the area.
Tallaght was built with little thought for community facilities. People were brought from the city and left to fend for themselves. But over the last two decades or so, the ingredients for vibrant communities have been slowly and painfully assembled: industry, the Square, an improved bus service, hundreds and perhaps thousands of local groups, clubs and organisations, the RTC, the long awaited hospital.
The people of Tallaght West carry with them the goodwill in building a better future but they deserve more than that: they deserve practical support too.