I came from East Wall with my wife and two children when we bought the house on Hughes Road South in 1956 for £1,100. We put three extensions on it over the years and it now has five bedrooms and a garage. We hired buses from CIE to run from the avenues to the seaside. The people had no cars and the young ones never saw the sea in the 1950s. We'd all go out to Skerries or Rush or Portrane and play football and swim. The women made the stew on the beach.

A lot of national organisations have developed from the Walkinstown area - it's a source of good thinking. The biggest thing was the start of the Community Games in 1967. The first Residents' Association was in Walkinstown and Eileen Proctor from John McCormack Avenue started the Widows' Association. We were the first area that built its own centre for the handicapped too. We thought handicapped people should have the same benefits as everyone else. So we went about it and built a timber construction. Now we have a £1.5 million building under way.

Houses should always be like they are in Walkinstown, built around open spaces so mothers can look out and see their children playing on the green. We raised four children. Brendan's a parachute jumper - he said he'd be in a sport I'd never be in and I nearly died when he brought home his first parachute. Joyce worked with me in the Community Games when I became general secretary. Leonard works on the 46A bus and Joseph is in Superquinn. None of them is too far away. My wife Vera died on our wedding anniversary in 1996. We were going out in the morning to the Community Games at Mosney, where she looked after the hospitality tent. I love the garden and use the back to develop my seeds. I do my thinking there. I have an interest in everything that happens here in Walkinstown.