Mrs Rosanna Pierson, and Mrs Christine Farrell at the Party.

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Agnes Nolan, Pauline Trulock, Moll Reilly, Annie Hickey, Larry Nolan, Margaret Moughan, Kathleen Condon, Bernie McLennan, Mary Healy, Sue Byrne, and Margaret Keane.

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Thanks to Sean Brennan for the Video Link ballyfermotheritage.com/john-sweeney-shares-his-memories-...

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Lord Mayor of Dublin Vincent Jackson & John Sweeney

Thanks to Sean Brennan for the Video Link ballyfermotheritage.com/john-sweeney-shares-his-memories-...

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Ballyfermot Heritage Group welcomed along this evening 26th February 2015 Bob Keogh to to our Heritage Meeting

Bob and Mary Keogh moved into Ballyfermot in 1959. Bob had heard of Ballyfermot but did not know where it was. Therefore when they received the key of their new house from Dublin Corporation Bob followed behind a 78 bus to on his bike to find their house. Bob had left school at 14 years of age and went into the tailoring business. Soon after he moved in, he joined along with a group of the residents the Ballyfermot Tenant’s Association. The Association had just started up. John Sweeney was the chairperson. Many of people at that time had all sorts of problems mostly concerning money as people had very little. Bob remembers one lady who came to his door at 10.30 in the evening and handed him a letter from Dublin Corporation to say that herself and her family were to be evicted the next day because she was behind in her rent. Bob asked about her husband and she told him that he did not know anything about this, and that she was in debt with moneylenders as well. Bob and John managed to contact one of their contacts in the Corporation that night to ask them to delay the evection notice for a week. The next morning they brought the lady to the Little Sisters in Sevenoaks. The Sisters managed to sort the problem out by getting the moneylender and the backlog of rent that the lady owed paid off. Bob has nothing but praise for the Little Sisters of the Assumption in Sevenoaks as they sorted many social problems like this out in Ballyfermot.

In 1962-63, Ballyfermot Tenant’s Association along with all the Tenants Association all over Dublin joined in the rent strike the reason being that Dublin Corporation wanted to nearly double the rents that the Tenants were paying and this strike lasted nearly one year. The Ballyfermot Tenants Association were also involved in the negotiations with Dublin Corporation, on behalf of the Tenant’s to buy out their houses. A good deal was set and many people bought out their houses. The Tenant’s Association then changed its name to the Community Association and Bob became the P.R.O.


Evening Herald 11 March 1971
From the early days, Ballyfermot was getting bad press, mostly not deserved. Any bad news within a radius of two miles from Ballyfermot was reported as Ballyfermot. One headline stated ‘Ballyfermot Man got six months for beating wife’ when Bob investigated this report the man lived in Cherry Orchard opposite the hospital where the Industrial Estate is now and he had only lived there for ten days. Suddenly he became a Ballyfermot man. Bob met with the press and they apologised and printed a retraction.

Another case was ’Seven Days,’ a weekly program shown on RTE Television in the 1970s. They sent a camera crew out to the Glass Road to film some young lads that were cider drinking. The ‘Glass Road’ at that time was a nickname as suggested because it was full of dirt and rubbish and covered with broken glass. Some years before it was a field that divided the lanes from Ballyfermot Parade to the Avenue and was dug up by the Corporation and cemented and then left derelict for a number of years. This was shown on T.V all over Ireland. The Community Association protested strongly to RTE on the grounds that it gave the impression that Ballyfermot was a horrible place to live. There were many protest letters written in to the papers and RTE in connection with the program. The papers interviewed Canon Troy and he went on to say "The program was stage-managed and was intended to show the steamy side of life. The vast majority of Ballyfermot people are decent and they were ignored. It was a disgrace and very unfair to the community".

A lady came forward to Ballyfermot Community Association to tell them that the lads were paid to stand around drinking while RTE filmed. RTE denied this and the Community Association were asked to send representatives from the Association to put their case across about Ballyfermot. Bob was one of the people selected. When the lady was asked to go with them she refused, as she was too shy to appear on the national television so they had to make the best case they could. After the show was over, John O Donohue, who was the presenter of the programme, was talking to Bob and he told him that his own community had their problems with drugs to which Bob replied ‘why did you not do a program on your community’. John O’ Donohue did not reply.


Ballyfermot was getting a bad name all over the country because of inaccurate headlines and television broadcast. The headlines had many repercussions for the people of Ballyfermot. The main one was that when a Ballyfermot person would apply for a job nine times out of ten they would not get it solely because they were from Ballyfermot so when some of the Ballyfermot people were applying for jobs they would give wrong addresses. Because of the strong protests to the papers and the misleading headlines that Ballyfermot was getting, arrangements were made between the Editors of the newspapers and the Ballyfermot Community Association that before anything was printed about Ballyfermot it would be run through Bob to make sure the story’s were correct. Bob served Ballyfermot well and has been involved in many voluntary organisations. He was twenty-two years a voluntary worker with Ballyfermot Credit Union as well as doing the plan giving in the area for Our Lady of the Assumption Church and he was on the educational committee of the Senior College, also the Scouts Bob praised all the people that served on the committees with him down the years and he went on to say. ‘That the people in Ballyfermot had very little but they had a great community spirit’.

Bob and Mary got the choice of Finglas or Ballyfermot in 1959
How lucky we were that they chose Ballyfermot

Notes taken from Ballyfermot Building a Community 1948 to 2006

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