Inside the training unit in Dublin’s Mountjoy Prison last Wednesday morning, six prisoners gathered to begin their day’s work restoring bicycles for the Good Bike Project.
“It fills your day, and it gives you a feeling of usefulness,” said John* a participant in the project, which donates bicycles to Ukrainian refugees.
“Here in the Men’s Shed, we do all sorts of things like carpentry, woodwork and metalwork. But unlike other things we make, these bikes go directly out there to the public, and there is a great satisfaction in that.”
Before beginning his sentence in Mountjoy, John “had an interest in motorbikes”.
“When the chief mentioned this scheme to me, I was immediately interested,” he added.
The Good Bike project donated its 2,000th bicycle last month. Run out of McQuaid’s shop in Usher’s Island, it has been in operation for almost 18 months since the outbreak of the Ukraine war.
The prison got involved in February after the Irish Red Cross, which provides financial backing for the project, helped introduce it to Mountjoy’s training unit. The participants there have recently finished restoring their 60th bicycle.
“We all had bicycles at some stage in our life. When I got my first proper bike as a kid, I got tools together and took it apart to put it back together again because I just had to know how to do it. I was curious about that sort of thing,” John said.
[ Dublin project donates 2,000th bike to Ukrainian refugeesOpens in new window ]
It is “fantastic” that the bicycles are being donated to Ukrainians, he added, because he had seen many stories about the war on the news and “you’d see pictures of the families and imagine having to uproot your life and bring just what you can carry”.
“So the bikes are a very practical thing that can help them,” he said. “A lot of the time it’s just a frame we get and we build it back up, or a rusted heap, and it surprises me how we can get a bike from that to looking brand new.”
The group involved ranges in age from 55 into their 80s, and are nearing the end of their sentences.
Mountjoy’s assistant governor, Dave Mulligan, said the work helped to “prepare them for life outside the prison”.
“They’re here Monday to Friday restoring the bicycles. They started working on this project in February. We don’t have any targets, it takes as long as it takes, because we’re not in production here,” he said.
“It’s great for them to be able to imagine that a person who needed it is out there cycling around on a bike they restored.”
Greg O’Callaghan, work training officer in Mountjoy, said there was “huge interest and enthusiasm” about the project in Mountjoy, appealing to the public to donate more old bicycles to keep the project’s wheels turning. He said “people of all abilities can take part, even if they’re not mechanically minded”.
“We don’t turn anyone away. We have more experienced men who can help people who need a bit more training and then when they’re trained up, they can help the next men who join,” he said. “It’s a constant cycle, pun intended.”
*name changed as prisoners cannot be identified
