A long standing resident of Ashbourne for nearly forty years, I have watched our community grow through the decades from a small rural village to the densely populated town it now encompasses. Like so many of my contemporaries who have also chosen to stay and raise the next generation of Ashbourne natives, I have seen the affects of our sprawling population. The back roads we once roamed on our nature walks from school have been heavily populated now with row upon row of new houses. We were the first students to attend secondary school in Ashbourne and now our schools have doubled in size to meet the demand brought about by the increase in families leaving Dublin and choosing to make Meath their new home. I have seen our beautiful green fields eroded and trees torn down to be replaced with the building of new homes, new schools, new retail units (- many of which stand vacant decades later), office blocks and industrial units. We commuters spend at least two hours per day (pre-COVID-19 times) traversing into the city and our saving grace is coming home each evening and seeing the clear skies, lush farmland and age old trees on the commute home. It is alarming that it took the plight of a national pandemic to truly show how badly we need access to open public green space within our town border. Green space that can be used by all people, of all ages and all ethnicities, a place where we can meet up, play sports and unwind - a space where our community can flourish and do just that, be a community. Mental health and well-being has been a hot topic this past year and a half and research has shown being in nature is key. 'Being in nature, or even viewing scenes of nature, reduces anger, fear, and stress. Exposure to nature not only makes you feel better emotionally, it contributes to your physical wellbeing, reducing blood pressure, heart rate, muscle tension, and the production of stress hormones.' I cannot understand with a population such as ours, that is second only to our county's capital, is deprived of so much, our children given so little. We have ONE public playground, ONE! The idea that there would be any change to our proposed new park which so many residents have fought so long and so hard for is horrifying. Long-standing residents of Ashbourne, Ashbourne Playspace and our councillors have been fighting for many years now for us to get to this stage and the mere suggestion that any changes should be made to the draft plan in favour of more houses is not acceptable. The access to the park, all 80 acres of it must progress as is and not be cut up and watered down based on monetary value. Future Analytics reported that 80 acres was the bare minimum of greenspace required just to bring us up to standard with our contemporaries and a town of our size. Please put our community first, please have the foresight to allow our community to thrive. One of the back roads we walked during our school nature walks was [Redacted_Personal Information] lane up to the old church ground, how fitting would it be for the land that [Redacted_Personal Information] donated to the Church to be used by all of the parish, people of all ethnicities and religions to now welcome visitors, Ashbourne residents of all age, nationality and religion into our park.