I live outside Ashbourne in a rural setting, Ashbourne is my closest town. I have lived in this area for 40 plus years, and watched Ashbourne develop from a village into busy and vibrant town. However for the last 15 years it is becoming more and more of a concrete jungle, antisocial behaviour has risen and the community more guarded and less friendly.
I firmly believe this is due to lack of open space, people need open space to breath and recharge. If you are stuck working in an office all day, you do not want to come home and walk around roads with traffic passing and constant noise and pollution. You want to walk in a park surrounded by nature and peace to recharge and repair your mental health. Teenagers need open space to gather and talk, not dark and dreary concrete multistorey carparks but actual open space, with fresh air.
It has become abundently obvious over the last 18 months just how desperatly Ashbourne needs publicly accessible greenspace. All private lands owned by the various Clubs in Ashbourne were closed. Within the 5km restrictions it was impossible to access any green spaces and people had to take exercise using a route through various housing estates or up and back on the main road through the village beside traffic. None of this helps peoples mental health.
The 80 acres identified for the park are perfectly located, close to the center of town, easily accessable for all, indeed extensive assesswork work has been completed. A community the size of Ashbourne needs a large park to faciliate its growing population, indeed any smaller would be a disservice to its population. Ashbourne has great community spirit and the community and councillors would be more than happy to work with Meath Co Co to help secure the necessary funds for the park.
The lands at Churchfield have been identified as the perfect entrance to the park linked to the town center, schools etc. Indeed the lands were gifted to the Church by [Redacted_Personal Information] for the community, to put up houses on the land is a mistake. It would be against the sentiment of the original landowner, and against the wishes of the community. Indeed building more houses, while still not having any publicly owned green spaces is inconciliable and only serves to increase the need for publically owned green space. The Community has campained long and hard for public open space, for the County Council to ignore their requests to keep these lands as green space is inconceivable.
I trust that Meath County Council will support its citizens wishes, zone the lands as public greenspace and engage with the community to progress our goal of a publically owned park for all Ashbourne and indeed Meath residents to enjoy