Minutes of the Dublin 15 Environment Group Meeting Date: Tuesday 21th Febuary 2006 Time: 7pm Present: Monica, Maria, Maeve, Petrina, Deivis Absent: Frédéric, Valerie Eugene Moore of the Fingal Community Department attended the meeting to give an outline of a themed networking infastructure he is trying to set up between local groups in the county. Currently local groups such as ours work very much at the grass routes, with limited (if any) impact on policy decisions made at county/country level. If we network with other groups who have an enviromental focus, we can increase our voice. Using the Community Forum framework, we could even get a representative on the County Development Board. We would be a steering group, who come up with an initial structure/goals/mission statement etc. Eugene puts us in contact with other related groups. This could be informal at first and maybe involve a formal seminar (s) at some point. Eugene would help with any resouces needed to facilitate this. The end result would be a much stronger voice on the county even country level w.r.t. the environment. It would also give us the opportunity to learn from other groups/share ideas etc. We agreed to dedicate our next meeting to a brainstorming session on this. We would like to have something started before May, as everything slows done during the summer months. National Tree Week (March) Gardening for Wildlife Workshop Venue & speaker booked. Article sent to community voice. Poster done by Petrina – distributed during the meeting. Poster will be sent to the Tolka Valley volunteers, who were all very interested in wildlife. The stone for the tree is en-route. It is a huge granite thing which will have to be put in place by a crane. Monica verified with the Blanchardstown centre management that we could still put it by the tree. Tolka Valley Renewal (Febuary) Maria and Maeve attended the event on the 11th. Petrina on the 18th. We didn’t have enough time to discuss them, but overall feeling was positive. Next event is on the 25th, which Maeve/Maria hope to attend.   Hanging Backets/Seed Distribution (April) April – Monica will see if Roy Hutton can do it on Tuesday 25th of April. The Community Voice article needs to be done for the end of March (April edition of paper). May – TBA by Patricia Kennedy. Monica will ask Roy if any in particular during green fingal week suits him (8->12May).   Any Other Business The ring fort in coolmine has been marked on the map for proposed development of the coolmine park. There are rumours of another one in Corduff. We need to check with Gerry Clabbe on that. Una Whelan of the Blanchardstown Tidy Towns committee joined the meeting. She may join our group. She gave an outline of what the tidy towns does. They are involved in the lobbying the council, flowers around the village, entering competitions. They have also published a book ‘Dublin 15 and beyond’ and are currently looking at producing a leaflet on facilities in the area. Maeve is to email Una some of our recent minutes so that she gets an idea of what we are about. Valerie is on maternity leave now. The cheque is in her desk and needs to be collected/lodged.   The proposed date for the next meeting is Tuesday 7th of March. Maria will book the room.