Finglas Centre launches new plan

A SERVICE user of the Finglas Centre inadvertently demonstrated its value to the local community on the day of the official launch of its strategic plan.

The local man had been at the centre earlier that morning desperately looking to have his CV printed in time for a job interview.

And just as the guests were gathering to wait for the launch by Minister for Employment Affairs & Social Protection Regina Doherty, he arrived back with news that he had landed the role as a pharmaceutical technician.

He was just one of thousands of locals who have availed of the services at the Finglas Centre over the past 33 years. Founded as the Fingal Centre in Finglas Village back 1985, the centre is still a vital stepping stone to employment for the local community.

The new strategic plan launched last week maps out its ambitions for the next few years, including a target rate of 80 percent for participant progression to further education or employment from its Communty Employment scheme.

The plan details its goals around employment and education with clearly stated objectives and actions, all designed to provide an ever better service to locals.

Centre Manager, Marie McCann, told Northside People that a lot of work had gone into preparing the plan.

“The beauty about it is that it was done by the staff and the management,” she said.

“Anybody who is involved in the centre, was involved in the process.”

Despite a reduction in the national figures, Finglas still has a huge unemployment problem with employment levels in some areas as high as 53 percent for males and 58 percent for females.

McCann says one of the factors contributing to this is computer literacy, or rather the lack of it.

“We have a cohort of young people in this area who, for example, are being told to sign on to Intreo and Jobs Ireland,” she explained. “But when you go to sign on, you have have email addresses and be computer literate but we have people in this community who aren’t.

“We want to work with those people and give them the computer skills so that they can apply for jobs online.

“There are people who come in here who have never been to an interview in their life. Some of them would be in their forties or fifties. It’s all about educating people about what they need to do if they’re actively seeking employment. 

“With so much unemployment in this area, we need to make sure they have the same opportunities as people from any other area going for an interview.”

The new strategic plan is designed to deliver exactly that – a level playing field for local jobseekers.

Minister for Employment Affairs & Social Protection Regina Doherty, who is herself originally from Finglas, praised the centre for its work during her speech to launch the plan.

“When you look at what this organisation achieves in this community that has had its struggles, not just over the last ten years, but over the last 40 or 50 years, and yet it is such a thriving, best example of what a community can do when they pull together,” she said.