Sergeant Dom Regan, Brid O’Dwyer Healthy Club Coordinator with the GAA, Clare GAA Chairman Kieran Keating, Samantha McCarthy of Healthy Clare, Margaret Nash from Bushy Park and Clare GAA Health & wellbeing committee member Cathy Hogan.
SIGNAGE is to be erected at the grounds of GAA clubs across Co Clare advising of the services available to help tackle drug and gambling use while also promoting wellbeing.
Clare GAA’s Health and Wellbeing Committee has teamed up with Healthy Clare to roll out the signage countywide with the installation to be completed across the summer months. The display signs will include contact details and services to help point the public in the right direction of where they can go to seek help for different issues.
John Conroy has been joint chairperson of the Clare GAA Health and Wellbeing Committee since its creation three years ago. He is joined on the committee by joint chairperson Mark O’Sullivan (Wolfe Tones), Cathy Hogan (Wolfe Tones), Sergeant Dom Regan (Éire Óg), Gráinne Travers (St Joseph’s Doora/Barefield) and Joe O’Donnell (Cratloe), all of whom are volunteers in this capacity.
Of their work to date, John explained, “We’ve looked at a couple of different initiatives, the first one we’ve been looking at for the last three years is the area of tackling drug intimidation and drug abuse in areas around the county, initially when we started out we held the meetings in regional areas in Kilrush, Lisdoonvarna, Scariff and Sixmilebridge, we invited the clubs to come in, we worked in tandem with Samaritans, Gardaí and Bushy Park. The Gardaí spoke about the drug intimidation programmes they have, that was led by Sergeant Dom Regan.
“A lot of families may not realise their son or daughter is using drugs, they end up getting into a debt, the family doesn’t realise it and these gangs call to the door for money, they demand X amount and the families know nothing, they could hand over €5,000 or €10,000. The Gardaí have a programme where they provide back-up support and help to the family in that case. Bushy Park led by Margaret Nash provide help to people who need counselling, support and they spoke at the meetings about the symptoms, signs and how they can offer help, they have a twenty eight day residential programme, they offer help through that. Samaritans are volunteering, they are involved in the mental health and they provided a frightening figure, they received 500,000 calls last year alone which is a call per minute. Samaritans are really good at and a lot of clubs don’t know about this which is the huddle talk, before or after training they will arrive, they’ll gather players in a huddle at the side of the field and speak for five minutes around the area of mental health, we’ve had a really successful programme with those three groups”.
With the GAA holding a central role in communities, it is considered a strong network to help tackle the unprecedented level of drug use in the county. “Ireland has the fourth highest use of cocaine in the world, the figure is startling and frightening, the GAA has a great connection in all communities, we thought we’d use the GAA as a means to provide support and services to members in the community, we invited all community people to attend the meetings. Initially when we started out people were very slow to get involved, numbers were small but as time went on and year on year numbers attending have been increasing, we’ve had good feedback and good attendances. We’ve about fifteen communities or clubs which we’ve gone out to”.
New to their efforts this year is the addition of the Healthy Clare signage. “We worked in tandem with Healthy Clare and Samantha McCarthy, we launched a Healthy Clare sign that each club in the county will get. On the sign is a list of all the charities and services available in your locality like Samaritans, Bushy Park and a whole lot of services,” John said.
A native of New Quay, John told The Clare Echo, “We’re basically a sign-posting service for these organisations, once we link in with the clubs we can tell them we’re here to provide help and there has been very good feedback from the clubs on the nights we went out on people accessing the services that we had on the evening”.
There has been demand from clubs for the wellbeing committee to speak with them. “A lot of it depends on the club as well, some clubs are very honest, they will admit they have a problem, other clubs may not realise the extent of what is there, it is in every club and every community, the more people open up and admit it is there then the clubs will get help a lot better and they will help their members and players a lot more, there is no point in hiding this, it is there”.
He added, “We’re involved in a critical response plan, unfortunately there’s been four or five tragic deaths in communities throughout the county, we’ve been called on to roll out a critical response plan which is in the event of someone dying tragically in the community that steps are in place with how to deal with the death of a player or member, what steps are there afterwards to deal with that”.
This autumn, they will hold a promotion evening to further amplify their message and attempts to help clubs. John praised the support of Clare GAA officials, Kieran Keating, Deirdre Murphy and Paddy Smyth.
