A local newspaper with a heart – remembering Ballymun Concrete News

Dublin City Library and Archive (DCLA) works to collect, preserve and share the history of Dublin. We want to tell the story of Dublin and ensure that in the future there will be a significant collection of documents, books, photographs and newspapers to record this history.

One such collection that we have acquired is the newspaper Ballymun Concrete News. Set up by journalist and Ballymun resident Seamus Kelly, the free newspaper circulated from 1998 until 2006 telling the good news stories of Ballymun, a large suburb in Dublin which was undergoing enormous change at the time.  Seamus kindly donated copies of the newspaper to DCLA several years ago and the staff created PDFs of the 87 editions and made them available online ensuring they can be read all over the world.

As the then Lord Mayor of Dublin Andrew Montague said at the launch of the digitised version of the newspaper in 2010:

“I associate the Ballymun Concrete News with the regeneration of Ballymun. The peak of the regeneration was a time of great change, and throughout that time, the Ballymun Concrete News told us the story of our own community. With its glossy and colourful format, the Concrete News always had a positive and vibrant feel. Seamus Kelly, the editor of the Ballymun Concrete News, was at the heart of our community at that time…….It was Seamus’s passion and commitment to Ballymun that gave the Ballymun Concrete News its heart. The paper was a constructive and positive force in the community and kept everyone up to date with all of the many changes that were going on at that time. It also gave local people a voice and place to read about their lives.”

Read more and see PDF copies of BCN. (We hope to make the newspaper available on our digital repository in the future)