One of the initiatives undertaken by Dublin's Ballymun Partnership is the Greencaps project, the brainchild of Mr Brian Byrne, general manager of Dublin Airport and a director of the Dublin Partnership Board. Identifying a demand for luggage assistance and queue management at the airport, he invited Ballymun Job Centre to participate in a joint venture with Aer Rianta to provide the services.
The result was Greencaps, a company employing 21 people who provide luggage portering to and from the airport car-parks, a left-luggage facility, assistance with US visa clearance, a wheelchair assistance service and management of taxi-queuing at the arrivals terminal. The company is a co-operative, wholly owned by its employees.
Following its success, the Ballymun Partnership and Aer Rianta have set up a company, the Skyline Foundation, to explore further opportunities for commercial collaboration in the airport complex.
Another Ballymun initiative is the Tramlines project, which aims to provide intensive computer training for the unemployed, with an immediate objective of placing 25 people in jobs as computer professionals.
Three selected volunteers were trained with the help of Microsoft. These became trainers of the 25 course participants, all but one of them unemployed and chosen from 410 applicants in the Ballymun area.