Council pulls plug on swimming pools as money runs out

THREE DUBLIN swimming pools are to close later this year because the city council has no money to run them after that date, councillors were told at their monthly meeting last night.

The pools at Coolock, Sean McDermott Street and Crumlin will have to close at the end of August because of the council’s budgetary difficulties, officials told the meeting.

Efforts to find local groups that might be capable of taking over the running of the pools have so far failed, assistant manager Philip Maguire said.

City manager John Tierney said the council would continue to seek ways of keeping the pools open but he warned that the funding situation was not promising. The €600,000 the council had found to run the pools for the first half of this year would last only until August.

Pointing out that the Government had warned that it needed to take another €3 billion out of the economy later this year, Mr Tierney said up to €500 million of this might have to come from local authorities. The council’s funding situation was unlikely to get any easier as a result.

Councillors criticised the plans to close the three pools and unanimously passed a motion affirming their commitment to standalone pools as part of the council’s sport policy.

Proposing the motion, independent councillor Cieran Perry said the working-class communities in which the pools were located had few enough leisure facilities without taking more away from them. The cost of keeping the pools open would be minimal as local people were willing to manage them.

Labour councillor Eric Byrne said Dublin would be “laughed at” for closing pools in the year it it was the European Capital of Sport.

Earlier, independent councillor Mannix Flynn defended his decision to resign from the board of the Dublin Inner City Partnership, which works with disadvantaged groups in the south inner city. Mr Flynn denied that he had run away from his duties, as some councillors had alleged, and said there was no way he could stay on the board after reading the report of auditors on the governance of the organisation.

Sinn Féin councillor Críona Ní Dhálaigh said she was amazed that Mr Flynn had “jumped ship” so quickly before getting the full facts. The Government’s decision to close the partnership was unjustified, she said.