€200,000 redevelopment planned for local playground

A €200,000 redevelopment is planned for Strokestown Community Playground, with condemned equipment due to be cleared before Christmas as the group behind the project prepares to raise funds for a full overhaul.

Almost a year after the Boreen Road facility partially reopened, Strokestown Community Playground Group says preparatory work has been taking place behind the scenes. Its plans cover both the fenced-off section and the equipment still in use.

A safety audit found no major concerns with the equipment currently in use. Group secretary Rory Doyle said the immediate priority was to clear the condemned section.

“We are now going to be clearing out the condemned equipment and tidying up that portion of the site, with an eye towards removing the temporary fencing and other stop-gap measures this side of Christmas,” Mr Doyle said.

The group, a subgroup of Strokestown Community Development Association CLG, commissioned an expert safety audit and asked Kompan, which supplied the original equipment in 2017, to draw up a fully costed redevelopment plan.

The proposed overhaul, estimated to cost in the region of €200,000, would replace the condemned portion and refurbish the section still in use, which Mr Doyle said “is now approaching end of life.”

The group initially considered relocating the playground but ruled out that option. “It proved unfeasible and at odds with the wishes of our partners, the Strokestown Community Development Association CLG, which owns the freehold for the site and insures it,” Mr Doyle said.

Explaining why little work had been visible since the initial repairs, he said: “We have taken our time to engage in a holistic examination of the site.”

On funding, he paid tribute to the tractor run organisers. “We are incredibly grateful to the Mad Mick tractor run committee, who initially raised €13,300 towards the restoration of the playground,” he said. “They have been keen to see the refurbishment progress but have been very understanding about the full scope of the project.”

Of that sum, €3,600 has gone on reports and repairs under Phase 1. The remaining €9,700 is being held by the tractor run committee while the playground group starts its own fundraising and grant applications for Phase 2 and later stages.

That leaves around €190,000 still to be found to complete the plan. The playground first opened in July 2017 after roughly 12 years of local fundraising and planning, but closed in April 2024 after repeated vandalism caused several thousand euro worth of damage.

A GoFundMe appeal followed, and the development association launched a Playground Recovery Fund with a €15,000 target that summer.

By early September 2024, just €610 had been raised.

The breakthrough came with the Mad Mick Tractor Run in April 2025. Its €13,300 contribution enabled replacement parts to be ordered, and the playground partially reopened at the start of December 2025.

One section remained condemned and behind temporary fencing.

“The long and short of it is that a lot of preparatory work has happened in the background,” Mr Doyle said.

“We are thankful for people’s patience with us, and we will be updating more frequently going forward as we continue to progress the project to completion over the coming year.”

Paul Kelly, engineer and brother to Mad Mick became the newly elected chairperson of the Strokestown Community Playground Group, having succeeded Martin Sheil the outgoing chair who successful oversaw Phase 1 of the development.

He commented further stating: “We are incredibly grateful to the committee that organised the tractor run for raising funds to get this project started and for working with us to date.

“They continue to hold the funds raised for us, and we will need a lot more than what is left to complete our ultimate vision, and hope to announce our fundraising initiatives soon. They continue to work closely with us on this project to date, and at our most recent meeting with them, we all agreed that we needed to get stuck into the work of trying to remove the old equipment this side of Christmas and in getting the remaining groundworks done to tidy up the site and take down the temporary fencing,” said Mr Kelly.

“I know there’s been some understandable anxiety around the pace of this work, but it has taken a lot of hours of many volunteers’ time to get us to this point where now we have a plan ready to fund and develop.

“We hope that having things visually looking well before Christmas and having double the play area cleared and back open for the kids to run around would be a nice way to end the year.

“The tractor run was a fantastic day, I know my brother would be over the moon with the fact that the money raised has helped even in a small way so far, to get our playground back up to the standard Strokestown deserves.

“The plans include a play tractor in Mick’s honour on behalf of the tractor run and we hope to see them organise another tractor run again for the benefit of other local groups,” Mr Kelly concluded.