Tom’s Address to Dublin City Hall
My name is Tom Magee, and I’m honoured to be up here tonight in City Hall, representing Sporting Liberties. Sporting Liberties is a grouping of Sports Clubs across multiple sports in the Liberties and South-West Inner City, and we’ve been working together for the past 10 years, to improve the lives of young people in our Community.
Firstly, a simple, wholehearted thank you to Furio, Mediolanum and to Fondazione Mediolanum, and to everyone here tonight. You are not only funding a Sports and Community facility; you are choosing to believe in the people of this area. That belief is a powerful choice. It tells the young people in our community that they matter, that their dreams are worth investing in and that their future is something we are building with them together. It’s a vote of confidence not just in sport, but in community, in resilience, and in hope.
On behalf of Sporting Liberties, and all the clubs and young people we represent, thank you for standing with us. If there is one word that can describe what we are hoping to deliver, to produce, and to achieve from this movement in Mediolanum Park – it is ‘*Connection*’. As my colleague Austin just said, we have been living with deep inequality in our community for decades.
This ‘Connection’, that we are starting here tonight, is a first. A giant first step in a Social Recovery Plan for the Community, and the momentum that this first movement will create, will be felt for generations. Sport and Recreation is taken for granted across Dublin, and across Ireland, and now, thanks to Mediolanum and all of you here tonight, we can bring the Sporting and Recreational values of Team Work and Connection to the young people of the Liberties. There are 8500 young people living in our community of approx. 50,000 people.
They are a fantastic resource, however their potential to flourish is restricted, by Social Inequality, a Lack of Opportunity for them to grow, Low Confidence, and Low Expectations. When word of this historic investment gets out tomorrow, and news spreads around the flats complexes and school yards of Dublin 8, the movement begins. The excitement, the good news, which has been absent for so long in this community will start removing those restrictions, and equality, opportunity, and expectations will rise. It will be safe to dream.
Many of the young people in our Community, have ended up trapped in the legacy of crime and addictions, that their parents and peers also suffered. Our aim is to break that cycle. Over the last couple of years, changes in the DCC Leadership team at Dublin City Council have resulted in fresh thinking and new attitudes to addressing the challenges our community faces. We welcome and thank all our representatives here tonight from Dublin City Council, and we very much look forward to continuing our work together to break this cycle.
I am President of Liberty Saints Rugby Club. A club which was founded by the late Graham Jones, who also founded Sporting Liberties. Graham passed away in 2018 at 42 years of age, but his legacy remains, and the impact his work with Solas Project ( he also founded that! ) has, also continues. In 2014 Graham introduced me to a group of 14 & 15 year old local teenage boys, we got them together as a group and formed a team in Liberty Saints RFC.
We worked with the lads as they went through their adolescence and remained connected with them as they reached adulthood.. When the team reached Under 20’s level, having been connected to sport, coaches, mentors and structure for the previous 5 years, our facility in St James Primary School could not safely accommodate the team for adult rugby. We had concrete walls, steel drain covers and very limited space, and so we had to introduce the young men to other rugby clubs in different nearby communities. At that moment, we lost the connection. The impact that the sport of rugby had had on these young men was profound. Discipline had been a dirty word until Rugby.
Sporting a black eye was now a positive thing, to wear with pride, a sign of a committed tackler, and learning to keep your mouth shut and not talk back to a referee was an actual skill that could be developed on the field, even in the heat of battle. Subconsciously, sport had made a real life impact on these 20 lads. The weekly game only lasted for 80 minutes on a Saturday afternoon, and training was only for an hour, twice a week but 7 days a week, the guys were engaged with each other and with the coaches, every day.
They were connected. They identified as Rugby Players. Parents, teachers, and local gardai and Youth Workers all gave feedback that there had been a real positive shift in the behaviour and attitude of these players. When the connection was lost with these young men, the impact on their lives was severe.Those lost connections resulted in depression, addiction, criminality, and tragically death for two players within 3 years.
We decided at the funeral of Adam Malone, our fearless number 9, that we had to focus on getting facilities into the area, as we all knew how Adam loved the game, but travelling to leafy Ballsbridge to a totally different environment? Adam did not connect. He needed that connection where it mattered most - in his own community.
This event tonight is life changing for young people in our community. We look forward to the buzz and highs and lows that lie ahead, as we commit to ourselves and to you all here tonight, to remain Connected.
Thank you all.