A Northside bingo session that has been running for more than 50 years has finally sung its swansong. The regular Wednesday night session held at St. Fergal’s Centre in Finglas has come to an end after dwindling numbers of people attending the game made it impractical to continue to hold.
The session was set up by friends local to St. Fergal’s Centre, Bob Furlong and John Hayden more than fifty years ago, but as Mr. Furlong says, the bingo session was very popular for years but people have gotten old and many of the original attendees has died, so the Finglas community has had to call time out on the bingo session.
One of the regulars players at the Wednesday night session, Frances O’Driscoll said that she had been playing bingo there the entire time it was active, sine she was thirteen years old, and that it would be sorely missed by the local community. She would attend the Wednesday night session with her family and at on time eight generations of her family were attending the bingo session. When she moved, she would cycle from the city to Finglas so that she wouldn’t miss the bingo session on Wednesdays.
This is not the first bingo session in Finglas to be discontinued, the Saturday night session at the West Finglas Community Centre also had to be cancelled due to lack of interest, it is all really quite sad!
