Make it a safer playground for our children

We have been enjoying our beautiful early summer weather here for the last few weeks and have been visiting lots of playgrounds. Myself, my husband, my four year old son and 6 year old daughter went to the Rathfarnham castle playground on Sun 1st May at 4pm. The playground was busy and the children were all enjoying themselves. One of the “side less” slide was always my main concern whenever the children played on it as I have seen number of children fall from it before so whenever my children were on it, I always stay right beside them. Unfortunately, this happened to my six year old daughter. I was only another meter away from her but could not save her from falling. She landed on her side and her elbow hit the ground badly. We rushed to the VHI swift clinic nearby. She has broken her elbow from this terrible accident. After another two hospital visits and hours of waiting, the consultant at Crumlin decided to do an operation on it to avoid the possibility of arthritis and complications in the future as well as to have a better recovery. I have asked the council and the park management team to either remove that sideless slides from the playground or improve it so it won't cause any more injury to our lovely children in the future but I wasn't happy with their response and here it is: "The Parks Department undertakes annual playground safety inspections of all our playgrounds every year. The last Annual Playground Inspection for Rathfarnham Castle Park Playground was undertaken on the 29th December 2010. This Playground Inspection Report confirmed that all equipment in the playground including all slides conforms to all relevant standards i.e. BS EN 1176/1176, no equipment as part of this inspection was found to be either defective or dangerous." I think the solution could be quite simple - a safety net under the slides should be sufficient but I always welcome any other suggestion and improvement to make this slides safer for our children. Please support us and spread the words if you like this petition. Thank you very much for your time. regards Furlongs, Bray, Co. Wicklow