Angry pensioners in ‘hands-off’ warning
‘Hands off our community centre’ – that’s the warning issued by pensioners living in Mervue, who are angry that their facility for socialising will be sold off.
The Mervue Active Retired Association (ARA) fears being “locked out” of the Mervue Community Centre if the trustees, who are charged with running it, bulldoze ahead with controversial plans to sell it.
Members of Mervue ARA are particularly angry with the “secrecy” surrounding the potential sale; and are frustrated with the complete lack of information and communication from the trustees.
It has been known as far back as 2011 that the trustees are planning to sell the community centre because, they argue, it would cost too much to repair – the facility badly needs refurbishment, including a new roof.
Galway Mayo Institute of Technology (GMIT) and St James’ GAA Club are among the interested buyers. There have been rumours that the organisation that buys it would renovate it and allow ARA and others use it. The facility has been home to Mervue ARA, and twice a week up to 60 of its members meet at the centre. The Ladies Club also uses the facility.
Mervue ARA are appalled at the prospect of being turfed out of the club, particularly when it was its members – the community – who raised the money in the 1980s to build it under a scheme known as ‘meitheal’, which was introduced by the then Bishop of Galway Eamon Casey.
“Individual families and individuals from the community – and not groups – raised the money to build that community centre and now these families are being kept in the dark as to what is happening with it. Trustees, look up the definition, they are supposed to hold it in trust for the community and keep it in good standing on behalf of the community. It is the community’s centre and it should not be sold.
“It’s a bit like the bank repossessing your house and saying ‘don’t worry, we’ll let you use it when the person who has bought it isn’t using it, and at a price we choose’. That’s what it’s like, that’s what’s being proposed. We’ll be locked out of it, if we aren’t given a say in how it is run. That’s wrong,” a spokesperson for ARA said.
Among the trustees are City Councillor Declan McDonnell and parish priest Fr Willie Cummins.
For more on this story, see the Galway City Tribune.