President opens Southill Community Centre

Irish President Mary McAleese was in Limerick Tuesday to officially open the new Southill Area Centre.

The new facility, a purpose built area centre for the Southill Community, contains a range of services for the area centred around a Community Cafe. A family resource Centre Creche along with the Limerick Youth Service and the Southill After schools club will also be based at the new centre. The centre also has sports facilities including a Handball Alley and a Multipurpose Sports Hall.

Speaking at the launch Tuesday morning, The President said it was plain to see the new centre has “truly become the heart of the community”.

An extract from the Presidents speech.

Looking around this wonderful new facility which has already opened its doors to your community, I want to acknowledge the time and effort that has gone into making this dream a reality. This is the culmination of a decade’s work, which started with a recommendation by the O’Malley Park Task Force in 1998. There were many challenges, some almost insurmountable, as for far too long, it seemed that the Southill and Ballinacurra Weston area had become stuck in a rut of social problems, a vicious circle of disadvantage and exclusion with no clear way out.

Yet on my visit here in January 2008, you could feel the mood for change, the determination and the focus on the future. The Fitzgerald report gave voice and vision to that mood.

So here we are just nineteen months on and this wonderful Community Centre is the bricks-and-mortar evidence of that vision translated into reality. The people of Southill are the true architects of this place for it was their engagement with Regeneration Agency and the Government that created the machine which is delivering real change, even through these tougher economic times.

So at last here it is a place for babies and toddlers, school kids and families, for the middle aged and the seniors with all sorts of built in support for individuals, families and the community.

The centre also hosts a range of dedicated outreach services including AlJeff Drug Treatment Agency facility. The Educational Welfare Board and the Limerick City Council Housing Department also have offices at the centre.

Construction on the centre began in March 2005.