The stories that made the headlines in our first edition, May 1987

The first edition of Northside People hit the streets in May 1987.

Formed by ex-employees of Dublin Newspapers – which had gone into liquidation the previous month – the paper was originally based in Dundrum Castle.

So what was making the headlines north of the Liffey back then?

The paper’s first lead story centred on a row between a group of angry parents and Portmarnock Community School. Parents voiced their unhappiness after their children failed to secure places in the school for the coming term and threatened to take legal action if the matter was not resolved.

However, the school’s principal, Pat O’Leary, laid the blame squarely with the Department of Education, saying they had warned of an acute shortage of school places in post-primary schools for many years.

He said that the school had been designed to cater for 800 pupils but now had 920, with 100 more on the way the following year.

“You just can’t get two pints of milk into a pint bottle,” he told Northside People.

Inside the paper we reported that Government proposals for a unified ferry terminal – incorporating both Dublin Port and Dun Laoghaire services – were now almost certain to be scrapped. This followed separate surveys on the proposal by the Office of Public Works and the Port and Docks Board.

We also raved about a new book written by a secondary school teacher called 'The Committments'. While our review was largely positive, we warned that the book “is written with the aid of a large measure of four letter words and is definitely not for those who are prone to offence”.

Somewhat prophetically, we concluded that ‘The Commitments’ looked set to mark the beginning of “a new and exciting spate of books dealing specifically with the Northside – not to mention Kilbarrack, home of the blues”.

We trust that Roddy Doyle was motivated by our positive review to eventually give up the teaching job and have a stab at the auld writing full-time.

In politics, we featured an interview with the former Fine Gael TD Alice Glenn, described in our introduction as “an outspoken critic of all that is lax and liberal in Irish Society”.

Outlining her opposition to the Single European Act, she warned it would impose a “secular humanist ideology” on the country and that abortion, divorce and euthanasia would be “forced upon the people of this State”.

In his ‘video scene’ column, our first editor Tim O’Brien (now a journalist with the Irish Times) reviewed new releases such as ‘National Lampoon’s European Vacation’, ‘Ruthless People’ and ‘The Supergrass’.

Our motoring page gushed enthusiastically about the new Opel Omega, with prices starting from £18,000. 

Ending on a positive note, a report on our back page confirmed that Beaumont Hospital would be open and operational by the end of the year.

Judged against today’s production standards, the first edition of Northside People looks dated, although we were all very proud of it at the time. However, lurking between its 12 modest pages were local stories about local people doing things locally. And that's a tradition we like to think we have proudly carried with us to the present day.

 www.dublinpeople.com