On Monday, Minister of Justice, Helen McEntee announced the granting of €3 million to 30 projects under the Community Safety Innovation Fund.
The funding comes directly from criminal assets seized by the Gardaí. As such it is a commendable redirection of money often made at the expense of those communities to which the Fund is ostensibly designed to benefit.
The purpose of the scheme is to assist “projects focused on holistic, community based responses to anti-social behaviour and crime.” The Minister herself described it as a means of “(p)utting this money back into the community [as] a really tangible way of showing that there can be a direct link between the activities of law enforcement and improved feelings of community safety.” The intent is certainly righteous.
The grantees encompass a variety of groups, including some already well funded NGOs, for projects dealing with issues of community safety and so on. One that jumps out to me is the €147,175 granted to Bohemians League of Ireland club under the rubric of an entity called the North Inner City Sporting Alliance.
We're delighted to be awarded €147,175 today under the Community Safety Innovation Fund by @HMcEntee, joining numerous other brilliant organisations to help create safer communities.
Funding is for the establishment of our North Inner City Sporting Alliance Programme (NICSAP).
— Bohemian Football Club (@bfcdublin) October 16, 2023
Its stated purpose is: “(T)o reduce crime and anti-social behaviour in the NIC area with a core focus of establishing a formal network of sports clubs and organisations. Underpinning this project is:
- A multicultural educational resource designed for children aged 9-12 championed by sports ambassadors and delivered in primary schools and sports within the NIC area.
- Workshops/Seminars delivered to all clubs in the Alliance.
- Two large scale annual showcase events for the community/clubs.”
Just why a professional soccer club, which has already benefited enormously from state and local authority aid – Dublin City Council owns their pitch having bought it for €3.8 million in 2015 – ought to be the conduit for this is a question worth posing.
Readers may remember a plan by MM Capital (sponsors of Bohemians) to to use part of the Phibsborough Shopping Centre adjacent to Dalymount Park for high rise rental “co-living” student accommodation. In December 2020 the planning application was altered to 321 and then 297 build-to-rent single rooms.
Despite Bohemian’s fantastical re-invention of its own history – it was actually founded in 1890 by members of the British colonial civil service Bell’s Academy and the British Army Hibernian Military School – in order to portray itself as some sort of anti-fascist “people’s club,” it had no problem rowing in with the controversial proposed development that attracted strong local community opposition.
Indeed, despite those community groups describing the proposal as “hideous,” Bohemians FC in a press release welcomed the MM project as helping to provide a “new civic space for the local community.”
Fortunately, it appears that local concerns won out over the interests of a wealthy soccer club and its wealthy corporate landlord sponsor. For on Tuesday of this week,, Dublin City Council confirmed that the 297 single room high rise co-living project was now in breach of amended guidelines banning “co-living” which became law in December 2020 and could not proceed.
(Architectural historian, Emma Gillece – Brutalism in Phibsborough – the future of co-living in Ireland? (rte.ie)
Bohs’ enthusiasm for co-living as part of build to rents might be easier to take if they did not engage in so much virtue signalling over Direct Provision. You can be pretty certain that if the residents of DP were all released into high rise single rooms that they had to pay for, that the bould Bohs would be against that too.
Anyway, as things stand, we shall have to wait for the victory of socialism now before the dream of having everyone living like ants or bees in a multi-storied co-living hive such as towered over the workers’ paradises of Moscow and Warsaw comes to pass. Or to Pasaran, perhaps, if you pardon the pun.
As for the Bohs rehabilitating lads leaning towards becoming Wrong ‘Uns, those familiar with the League of Ireland will know that Bohemians would be associated – when it comes to anti-social and criminal matters – with the regular problems involving some of the club’s “casual” and indeed far-left connected hooligans.
One wonders if the violence around Bohemians and Shamrock Rovers games over the years might have cost more than €150k in both Garda resources and criminal assault and damages.
Just two years ago, the 2021 FAI Cup final was marred by an attack on completely innocent supporters of St. Patrick’s Athletic at a pub close to the Aviva Stadium. The Irishtown House which was the target had been selected by Pats as a pre-match family meeting place.
Some of the anti-fash warriors supporting Bohs seemed to take exception to this exclusionary right-wing familialism and mounted an heroic assault that reminded pot-bellied veterans present of the Battle of Madrid, 1936. Which might have gone the other way had the reds managed to surprise Franco’s forces at home having their dinner with the kids.
At the time, the Irish Times quoted a St Patrick’s Athletic fan as saying he had been going to matches since the 1960s and had “never seen anything like this”.
“It was a group of about 30 with their faces covered and not wearing any colours. They came into the St Pat’s fans and just started kicking, punching, throwing bottles, throwing flares.”
Mr Keogh said the bottles were “raining” in on St Pat’s supporters. Video shows a lit flare hitting him in the back. “Luckily it just burned my jacket,” he said.
“I could see several people being randomly punched and kicked. Before that people were singing, people were having a good time. “It was horrific. I have never seen violence like that at a game before.
As we observed at the time:
For the past 20 years or so a small number of thugs who have associated themselves with Bohemians and with Shamrock Rovers have conducted an imbecilic feud where they meet up and attempt to bash one another. Facebook has a considerable collection of fight scenes celebrating this proud proletarian tradition.
Some of the thuggish Bohs crowd also like to style themselves as being ‘anti-fascist,’ something which seems to usually involve squaring up to members of the public attending anti-lockdown marches. The fact that those who were responsible for the attack at the Irishtown House were masked – and wearing what is effectively a black uniform associated with the thugs who engage in far left violence – was noted by some observers.
Bohs did condemn the attack as the action of a “tiny minority”, and we must always allow for repentance.
Perhaps Bohs’ plan on having some reformed “anti-fascist” street fighters in to show young tearaways the right path – the likes of which have not been seen since the playing fields of the Hibernian Military Schools were preparing lads to defend the Empire that gave us “football” against the Cunning Pathan and the Wily Confucian.
That would be worth every cent of their latest score from The Man.