Factory closures and relocation of government services were factors in business decline
FORMER mayor Diarmuid Scully, has a timely and upbeat message for Limerick citizens.
He says: “Three hundred years ago, Edmund Sexton Perry devised and executed a plan to build a beautiful Georgian city in Limerick”.
Welcoming the government announcement that it will part fund a comprehensive plan for reviving Limerick city centre, along with the city and county councils, he adds:
“The new plan to revive Limerick is the first real opportunity since then to fashion a city we can all be proud of – we have to get it right.
“The decline didn’t happen overnight, it has been going on for half a century, beginning with the depopulation of the city centre through the building of suburban housing estates from the 1960’s on”.
Pointing out that the building of out of town shopping centres was a significant factor in contributing to the decline experienced by the city’s retail business sector-not helped by the recession of the 1970/80s which saw the closure of a range of businesses – Halpin’s Tea, Ranks Flour, Clunes Tobacco, Geary’s Sweets and the Limerick Bacon Factory- Cllr Scully says that, unfortunately, when new employment was secured to replace the city’s declining industries, it located in the suburbs.
We must relocate employment opportunities back to the city and develop an
attractive retail, cultural and tourist offering….
“Government services have also been withdrawn – medical services to the Regional Hospital and Limerick County Council offices to the Crescent Shopping Centre, and this has resulted in the direct loss of hundreds of white collar jobs which had the knock-on effect of deflecting users of these services away from the city towards the suburbs”.
While city centre decline is particularly severe in Limerick, it is not unique to the Shannon-side city, and not caused entirely by the city’s high commercial rate.
“In the UK where commercial rates are standardised across the country, city centres are crumbling and 25,000 city based shops have closed in the last 12 years.
“The main causes of decline there have been identified as the increased use of internet shopping, increased car ownership and the prevalence of out of town shopping centres. All three causes will continue to affect Limerick even after city centre rates are reduced to the county level”.
Emphasising the importance of reversing the decline and finding ways to encourage people, including third level students and those involved in the creative arts to live in the city, Cllr Scully concludes:
“We must relocate employment opportunities back to the city and develop an attractive retail, cultural and tourist offering.
“We must ensure that the new local authority, its employees and services and the mayor’s and manager’s offices are headquartered in the city centre and we need proper public transport links, including bus lanes to make the city and its services accessible to all the people of Limerick – city and county”.
