Wicklow councillors warn of systemic failures amid crisis for family resource centre
The Wicklow PeopleCouncillors in Wicklow have used a local crisis in Greystones to expose what they say is a systemic failure in how the council plans, delivers and protects essential social services.
What began as a motion to discuss the forced relocation of the Greystones Family Resource Centre at their July monthly meeting, broadened into councillors describing a pattern of delayed community buildings, inaccessible facilities, rising commercial rents and vulnerable groups being pushed into unsuitable premises.
The message was clear: Housing estates are being built at speed, without the community supports needed to sustain the people who live in them.
The immediate issue centred on Charlesland, where the Greystones Family Resource Centre has operated for years from a rented unit. The centre’s work is extensive and often invisible: therapeutic sessions, parenting programmes, bereavement support, community education, crisis intervention, refugee assistance and collaboration with other local services.
Shrishyal Hadimani, Aedlugh Hurley, Cllr Louise Fenelon-Gaskin, Tánaiste Simon Harris, Cllr Stephen Stokes, Lynne O'Connor, Yasmin Fortune and Oscar O'Broin at the Greystones Family Resource Centre.
It is, councillors stressed, one of the few places where families in distress can turn for help. But when its five‑year lease came up for renewal, the rent rose from €12,000 to €19,000. This 55pc increase forced the centre to move into a temporary warehouse in Kilcoole.
Councillors said this has disrupted continuity of care for vulnerable people and highlighted how precarious essential community services have become.
Cllr Mark Barry, who brought the motion forward, argued that the situation reflects a planning and policy failure.
Wicklow is in a housing crisis, he said, and rezoning land and pushing for more homes is necessary. But housing without community infrastructure is incomplete, and charities and social services cannot survive on year-to-year leases in commercial units.
If the council does not plan for secure, long‑term community space, he warned, builders will continue to build estates without the supports that make them communities.
Cllr Lourda Scott pointed to Archers Wood, a major development of around 430 homes near Charlesland. As part of its planning permission, a community building was required. Six years later, following appeals to An Bord Pleanála, the building still has not been delivered.
Cllr Lourda Scott in Archers Wood Estate.
Cllr Scott said the facility could have provided a home for the resource centre.
She argued that Wicklow’s reliance on developers to deliver community facilities is fundamentally flawed, and that the county has no reliable mechanism to ensure these buildings are constructed on time or at all.
The result, she said, is that councillors are now sitting through call‑for‑sites meetings, discussing community gain, while knowing that promised facilities often never materialise.
“It is our communities and our organisations that are suffering as a result,” she added.
Even when community spaces technically exist, councillors said they are frequently inaccessible or unusable.
The Charlesland community room was cited as an example.
“This is a community room provided as part of a development for the residents locally to use,” said Cllr Barry. “It is controlled by a private management company, and it is kept under lock and key and it is not freely accessible.
“It is not maintained to a proper standard. There’s no budget for its upkeep, despite management fees being paid by residents.
“It has not been made available as a temporary stopgap to the Family Resource Centre either. So is it really a community space or is it still controlled by developers?”
He called on the council to examine enforcement of planning conditions related to community spaces, and to look into potential supports or interventions that could be available for the beleaguered family resource centre.
He also asked the executive to look at “how we can ensure that future developments guarantee genuine, accessible, well-maintained community space, not space in name only”.
Cllr Stephen Stokes, who had just stepped down as chair of the Greystones Family Resource Centre, said the organisation is “bursting at the seams”.
He added that the people they support are often struggling so quietly, people cannot see it.
“There is a lot of hidden poverty out there,” he stressed. “You know, Greystones has the perception that it’s a very well-to-do place, and there are people who are doing well, and good luck to them, but there are a lot of people who are struggling.”
He listed other groups in Greystones seeking premises, including arts initiatives, cancer support organisations and sports clubs.
Cllr Stokes said the problem is replicated across the county, where organisations are struggling to find suitable buildings and are often forced into temporary or inadequate accommodation.
Cllr Tom Fortune echoed the point, arguing that the resource centre ultimately needs a purpose-built building.
With substantial development underway in the district, he said, such a facility should be achievable through community gain.
He urged councillors and the executive to work together to secure a building that meets the centre’s needs and allows it to operate from a single location, rather than being split across multiple sites.
That’s got to be the bottom line,” he said. “The amount of work they do is just phenomenal. That’d be my take on it based on the conversations I had with them.
“There’s enough development going on in our district alone to provide that building and that’s where the focus needs to be.”
Blessington Day Care is based in the Coimín Centre.
Cllr Gerry O’Neill raised a parallel crisis in Blessington, where a long‑standing, parish-run day care centre for older people is being moved by the HSE to a private primary care centre that councillors say is totally unsuitable.
The centre has served residents in their eighties and nineties for decades, and Cllr O’Neill said the move has caused great distress in the community.
He linked the issue to earlier discussions about Carnew, where a pioneering cluster of elderly housing and a community centre is falling behind modern needs.
When it was built it was ahead of its time, he said, but earlier Cllr Pat Kennedy explained the Carnew Nursing Home residents can no longer get to the village from the home due to poor footpaths.
Funding has been allocated to repair them, and officials said they would follow up on progress and have the issue prioritised.
In Greystones, the family resource centre provided 167 therapy and support sessions in the first quarter of the year, plus 78 crisis calls.
Sharing these figures, Wicklow County Council’s cathaoirleach Cllr Caroline Winstanley said they show how fundamental the centre’s work is and how vulnerable such services are to rent hikes, planning delays and insecure premises.
She added that these family resource centres provide “a lot of hidden supports within our communities and would prop up a lot of what the HSE offer”.
“I think a lot of it is very invisible,” she said.
Council officials acknowledged the scale of the problem. Chief executive Emer O’Gorman said community space is “at a premium” and “badly needed in the county”. She noted that the Social Policy Committee is auditing facilities across Wicklow to determine what exists, what is needed and where gaps lie in the system.
She invited the resource centre’s board to write directly to begin formal engagement.
The debate ended with broad agreement that Wicklow needs a countywide plan for community infrastructure, not piecemeal responses to crises.