Despite angry row at City Hall, local councillors all back proposed Finglas boxing club move

The shouting erupted at the Dublin City Council meeting on Monday night after independent Councillor Gavin Pepper proposed a "topical issue" entitled “Halloween Youth Diversion through Boxing Programme”.

"Finglas United is willing to make 2 dressing rooms available for local boxing club. In the run up to Halloween and increasing concerns regarding fireworks and antisocial behaviour I am asking DCC to urgently facilitate this proposal," it said.

But not enough councillors voted to discuss the issue at the monthly meeting of the full 63-member council at City Hall, which already had a full agenda – so it didn't make the cut.

Local issues should be dealt with in the local area committee, not at the full council, said Sinn Féin Councillor Anthony Connaghan, who, like Pepper, represents the Ballymun-Finglas area.

“If a club is willing to give dressing rooms to another club, for whatever purpose, there is no need for every councillor in Dublin to talk about something that is relevant for Finglas West,” he said. 

The building is owned by Dublin City Council, so the move requires the agreement of the council parks manager, according to councillors.

Pepper later brought up the issue again, and verbally attacked councillors who had voted against holding the discussion. To which they responded robustly.

The Lord Mayor, Fianna Fáil Councillor Daryl Barron, who was chairing Monday's meeting, tried to call for order a few times. At times, he threatened to suspend the meeting. 

In the end, Barron offered to arrange a meeting between the boxing club, the local area manager in Finglas, and the local councillors for the council's North West Area.

All local councillors say they support the idea of the boxing club moving to share space with the local football club in Kildonan Park.

During the meeting, one councillor accused Pepper of using the full council meeting as a stunt to create content for his social media. 

Indeed, after the meeting Pepper posted about the issue on social media, which is a common thing for councillors to do – but he also posted a digital poster attacking specific councillors.

"They voted against youth diversion" it says in big letters. "Shame on you four politicians", "Remember this at the next election", it also says.

No one voted against youth diversion, or the boxing club. Some councillors voted against discussing a "topical issue" regarding a local youth diversion programme for Halloween at the full council meeting.

In the end, Pepper says he's happy he was able to get the issue the attention he believes it deserves, and satisfied with the result.

The issue

The background to all this is that West Finglas Boxing Club needs a home of its own. 

The club is based in a shared community centre two nights per week and can't train more due to a tight timetable of activities in the centre.

Finglas United Football Club has offered to share space with the boxing club, in a facility which it currently uses for dressing rooms in Kildonan Park.  

Brendan Fitzpatrick, a coach with West Finglas Boxing Club, says that getting access to the facility in the park would transform the club’s future “a million percent”.

"The club is going from strength to strength," he says. "Where there is poverty, boxing thrives."

At the moment all their best boxers leave to go to other clubs as most clubs have their own premises where they can train as often as they want, he says, and it's heartbreaking and frustrating for coaches to watch them leave.

“Any of our boxers that show promise they leave,” he says.

John Fox, chairman of Finglas United, says he first offered to share the dressing room space in Kildonan Park with the boxing club around 20 years ago. 

He wants to progress the idea to benefit around 50 local children in the boxing club, he says. “This is for the local kids in the area,” he says. 

Fox says an extension may be required to fit the boxing ring into the building, but Fitzpatrick says the club will work around that issue and could get a smaller ring if needed. 

What is a topical issue?

There are a few ways for councillors to press issues. Councillors can submit questions to the local area manager or the council’s chief executive, to which they get responses. 

They can also submit motions to the meetings of their local area committees, or to the full council meeting for a vote. If agreed, motions should cause council officials to take action – if they cover an issue that falls under councillors', rather than officials', powers. 

If a councillor has an urgent issue, they can submit an emergency motion to the full council meeting. Any such matter must be under the council’s control, and urgent or an emergency, says the council rule book.

But the rules also allow councillors to submit a "topical issue" for discussion, with no definition of what counts as a topical issue, but with a vote required on whether to discuss each topical issue. 

So all councillors could submit all their local issues as topical issues, and councillors from all over the city would have to vote at the full council meeting on whether to discuss these.

If councillors agree by a two-thirds majority to accept the topical issue, then the motions on the agenda are suspended and the topical issue gets debated instead. 

On Monday there were 38 motions on the agenda, the oldest of which were submitted in March 2025.  

Since topical-issue discussions take up time that could go to motions, many councillors have expressed dissatisfaction in the past with the process. 

The majority of councillors wanted topical issues scrapped, say the minutes of the council's protocol committee in May. But that didn’t happen. 

In June, councillors agreed a new set of rules for meetings that kept topical issues.

Green Party Councillor Ray Cunningham said the standing orders sub-committee would continue debating the issue of what to do about topical issues.

Why was it discussed?

On Monday, 35 councillors voted in favour of the topical issues discussion, and 22 against. 

Since that didn't reach the two-thirds required, the issue should not have been discussed at the meeting. 

But Pepper raised the issue later in the meeting under the section for the report for the sports, arts and culture committee.

This is common practice. Councillors regularly find ways to bring their issues into the meeting anyway, after being officially refused an airing.

“I have so much support for this and I was wondering would the management go down and meet with the clubs?” he asked. 

He thanked Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael councillors for supporting the proposal to discuss the issue. Then he turned to those who didn’t back the discussion taking place.

“It was absolutely shameful to see champagne socialists who turned up to events in relation to something like this and vote against it cause of their own personal issue with me rather than the communities,” said Pepper. “To vote against a boxing club for young children is shameful.”

Barron, the Lord Mayor, who was chairing the meeting, tried to move on from the issue and back to the meeting agenda. 

But then other councillors said they had a right to respond to what Pepper had just said, which independent Councillor Cieran Perry called a “rant”.

“Does Councillor Pepper not understand that topical issues … they don't have status, they are not a motion?” he said.

“He’s just doing that for his videos online,” said independent Councillor John Lyons, “making a nonsense of this chamber.”

By phone on Wednesday, Pepper says he has also raised the issue of the boxing club locally.

On 31 August, he submitted a motion to the local North West Area Committee, which will come up at its next meeting, which is next Tuesday, he said. 

Dublin City Council's press office has not yet responded to queries about this motion, and about the plans for the boxing club. 

Pepper said he wanted to bring the issue to the full council because it's important and the full council meeting on 7 September was sooner than the local area committee meeting on 15 September.

“It's an urgent issue,” he says. He doesn’t think the council officials are deliberately dragging their feet, he says. But “it hasn’t been moving as fast as it should be”, he says.

A shouting match in the chamber

On Monday evening the meeting, at times, descended into a shouting match. 

Several councillors said local issues should be dealt with locally. Some said the council should scrap topical issues altogether. 

Independents 4 Change Councillor Pat Dunne asked where Pepper had been when he was arrested during the water charges protests. “If you call that champagne socialism there is something wrong with you.”

Social Democrats Councillor Cat O'Driscoll said that the issue could be raised at the local community safety partnership as well as the local area committee. “Much as I love champagne I’m more of a prosecco girl,” she said.

Pepper tried to come back in on several occasions. “Lord Mayor, I’ve every right to respond,” he said. “I’m not going to be shouted down.”

“Lord Mayor there is people online,” said Sinn Féin Councillor Janice Boylan, who had joined the meeting via video link.

Barron called on her to speak. “Councillor Boylan, then Councillor Connolly,” he said. 

“That's discrimination,” said Pepper. 

“It's not discrimination. It's absolutely somebody ...” Boylan started.

“It is discrimination,” Pepper cut in. “It is discrimination. Champagne socialist.”

“What you want to do is scream from the sideline and go into every other community that you possibly can to come up with a story,” said Boylan. “Of course we support communities, and of course we support boxing.”

“A topical issue is a mechanism to discuss something; it goes nowhere else after we discuss it, and everybody knows that,” said Boylan. 

Fianna Fáil Councillor Keith Connolly who represents the area said he voted in favour of the discussion going ahead. “I welcome any attention to Finglas,” he said. “I am interested in the manager's response.”

Local Social Democrats Councillor Mary Callaghan said she too voted in favour of the discussion taking place, because it was in her local area. 

“I’d just like to end this conversation, congratulating the amazing people who work for the community, on a volunteer basis, John Fox and his team at Finglas United,” said Callaghan at the meeting. “They do an incredible job.”

But the spat spilled over online, after the meeting. 

###After the meeting

In his digital poster, Pepper said Sinn Féin Councillor Daithí Doolan, independent Councillor Cieran Perry, Social Democrats Councillor Karl Stanley, and Green Party Councillor Janet Horner “voted against youth diversion”.

Perry posted a video on Facebook in response to Pepper, in which he called Pepper a “clown” and said that discussing items as topical issues is pointless, and a proper councillor would table a motion. 

Motions, at least in theory, spur council officials to take action, while topical issues just get discussed. 

But Pepper says he is happy with the result of his intervention.

“I wanted to bring it to the top levels of the city council so that all members could listen and have a debate,” he said by WhatsApp message on Wednesday. “What came out of it is that the Lord Mayor will meet the group that I was representing.”

Local People Before Profit Councillor Conor Reddy, who voted in favour of the discussion, says that he and local Sinn Féin TD Dessie Ellis have attended a series of meetings in an effort to find a space for the local boxing club. 

Connaghan, the local Sinn Féin councillor, said by phone on Wednesday that he strongly supports the council working to secure long-term premises for the boxing club.

Connaghan says he has also spoken to council managers about the situation and understands that they are working with the club to assist it to develop the structures it would need, in case it needs to apply for sports capital grants. 

Fox, the chairman of Finglas United FC, says that around six or seven weeks ago he again raised his idea – which he originally came up with 20 years ago – to share the space in Kildonan Park, with the boxing club. 

He wants this to happen and is keen to push it forward so he spoke to Brendan Fitzpatrick in the boxing club and he spoke to three of the local councillors, Reddy, Pepper, and Connolly. 

Fox says the only potential issue with the plan that he can see is that the current building might not be big enough for a boxing ring. “I don’t think the room is big enough,” he says. 

There are two rooms, says Fox, but there are showers in between them so they cannot easily be knocked through, and the wall could be a supporting wall. “The best bet in the long run would be to do a small extension to it,” says Fox. 

He says he discussed this problem with Reddy and they talked about the possibility of the council seeking funding to do an extension and whether an architect would be required. 

Fitzpatrick, the coach with West Finglas Boxing Club, says the members and coaches are buzzing about the idea of getting dedicated premises, regardless of what size it is. 

At the moment they have to take out all the punching bags every time they train and install a fold-out ring, he says and they can only train twice a week. 

They have good coaches, he says. But it is hard to retain voluntary coaches when all the best fighters leave to go to clubs that have better facilities. “It's frustrating,” says Fitzpatrick. 

Training twice a week is not sufficient for boxers who want to go pro or represent Ireland, says Fitzpatrick.

But despite the lack of facilities the club is growing and currently has around 50 members. “I personally think Finglas is a sleeping giant for boxing,” he says.