By Dermot Lacey
In 1984, at the height of massive unemployment, Ruairi Quinn, then local TD and Minister for Labour (now Enterprise and Employment) introduced what was known as the Social Employment Scheme. This was an innovative scheme that actively encouraged unemployed people to take up part time work in the community and gain new skills.
Conscious of his responsibility as a local community leader he tasked me with establishing local community projects, availing of the Social Employment Scheme, all across the Constituency.
The very first of these initiatives was a project called Sandymount Help – subsequently changed to Sandymount Community Services and the very first person I approached, at Ruairi’s suggestion, was Ann Ingle to ask her if she would become Chairperson of the new organisation. From that decision so many new and innovative projects emerged.
But that was not the first time I came across Ann. In those days her home on Sandymount Green was the nearest thing the area had to a Community Centre. You could drop in and find a local person down on their luck being fed a meal in one corner and the future Nobel Prize winner, Seamus Heaney, in another waiting for their latest Draft to be typed up by Ann. Alternatively you could have the (uniquely and certainly not within the then rules of the Irish Girl Guides) male and female Leaders of Roslyn Girl Guide Company having a post event review. Ann Ingle was and is simply one of the warmest, kindest and most generous people I know.
But back to Sandymount Community Services; joined by Roseane Lavelle, the late John Murray, Mick Stenson and Nicola Underwood Quinn and local Butcher Michael Byrne, we established a new organisation that has published NewsFour to this day. Innovatively managed by Dermot Rafter, and then Denis McKenna, but crucially led by Ann Ingle, the project created new jobs and local training initiatives, renovated, through Sandymount Help, dozens if not hundreds of homes for those who could not afford to do so themselves, established a TeamWork scheme for people under 25, published at least four local history books and had huge fun along the way. In everything Ann Ingle was the guiding voice, the local contact, the inspirational leader of the Team, all alongside being a wonderful Mother and a truly kind person.
Sandymount Community Services was also the “dreamer up-er” of the Sandymount, Irishtown and Ringsend Arts Festival ( SIRAF) which ran for two or three years bringing a range of cultural activity to the area, and the introduction in 1988 of the Sean Moore Community Awards – still running to this day. The lasting tangible legacy of this initiative is of course NewsFour.
However, the more important legacy has been the transformed lives of hundreds of men and women who came through the (many different) Sandymount Community Services doors who were, often unknown to themselves, mentored and guided by one of the kindest yet strongest people I know – Ann Ingle. Ann has been the guide and hand-holder for so many who needed it, and Sandymount Community Services only one of many ways in which she exercised that spirit of service which is her hallmark.
I am proud of all the work that, together, we have done through Sandymount Community Services – but most of all I am proud to call Ann Ingle a friend. Thank you Ann, and thank you to your sons and daughters who have been with you and by extension with us though the many good times, and some not so good times over those years. You have a right to be proud of yourselves.
Read more:
Ann Ingle by Eoin Meegan
Tribute to Ann Ingle on her retirement by Denis McKenna
Tribute to Ann Ingle on her retirement by Rodney Devitt
