Twenty years of KCA: Orla O'Neill

At the signing of the Childcare Centre lease in December 2012, Orla O'Neill, Iseult O'Donoghue and Kate Steed.

Kilcullen Community Action was founded 21 years ago, on 9 May 2001. The Diary asked a number of people who have been involved with it during the last 20 years to give us some of their thoughts on the organisation. We will be publishing these as they come in, to mark the completion of two decades of KCA work.

I was initially a member from about 2005, and served a period as a director, writes Orla O'Neill. I have been a member for the past two years of a KCA subcommittee to work on the Kilcullen Design Statement. 

The first time round, I was interested in community development — tackling issues like facilities for young people, public transport and the playground. During my time then I thought there needed to be more people involved that were interested in more than Tidy Towns. I wasn't a gardener nor had I a big interest but I was interested in the value of people working together for the betterment of the town. It didn't happen when I was there, but did shortly thereafter and it seems to be thriving now with new people. 

Although the playground process took place separately, KCA was very much the catalyst for bringing the group together and being 'base camp' for the project. 

For the design statement, I was hoping to engage KCA in the benefits of having a Design Statement process and that happened. 

KCA has been THE group in the town to spearhead most of the major (non-sporting) developments. They were either directly involved, a catalyst for, or an invaluable support base for Community Awards, Christmas Lights, Summer Flowers, Kilcullen Community Playground, Kilcullen Community Consultation and Development Plan, Kilcullen Childcare Centre and all of the other current initiatives that people will list such as the Community Garden, Energy Audit and more including the current Kilcullen Design Statement process. They also provided the insurance for the River Festival. 

KCA provides a focal point to the community to come together — they organise public meetings when needed and give local people a 'go-to' organisation when they need to raise issues. 

The model it currently works to is successful — it is very much volunteer led and this is its strength. I'd like to see KCA try to wield more power with local authorities, demanding more public services. Also perhaps to convene a network of local community and sporting organisations — maybe have a quarterly meeting to share information and identify priorities — perhaps work together as appropriate on particular campaigns around more and better community infrastructure. 

There is also a need to engage more with the planning process, to keep development in line with community needs and to ensure the Design Statement principles are adhered to. There is a need to look at longer term needs of Kilcullen — does it need more school places; more local employment and enterprise support; more facilities for older people, better public transport, more and better public housing so that people don't need to travel outside of the town for these things. However, this would need KCA to seek funding for paid workers, this couldn't be done by volunteers alone. This would bring its own headaches and there is no guarantee it would be successful — a risk analysis would have to be carried out and there may not be the appetite to pursue this approach.

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