As the one-year mark touched down in the first term of Limerick’s first ever directly-elected mayor, Limerick Post reporter Alan Jaqcues sat down with Mayor of Limerick John Moran for a conversation about the love of the job, his ambitions, navigating clashes with councillors, and steering the good ship Limerick.
IT was Italian priest and scholastic thinker Thomas Aquinas that said, “If the highest aim of a captain were to preserve his ship, he would keep it in port forever”.
Well, one year on from the election of John Moran as Limerick’s first directly-elected mayor (DEM), he has proven, time and again, that he isn’t afraid to rock the boat.
As the new skipper at the helm of Limerick City and County Council, Mayor Moran has been a calm, capable, and consistent leader.
In the last 12 months, his steady hand has traversed an enterprising course through the choppy waters of local government, and often hushed adversity from councillors.
As the tumult and shouting of the early months of his mayoralty quietened, John Moran set his focus on giving the people of Limerick what they truly want — success.
A visionary with great clarity, and a public servant who holds himself to the highest standards, Limerick’s first citizen presents an ocean of untroubled tranquillity.
When the Limerick Post this week caught up with Mayor Moran in his airy quarters in Merchant’s Quay, overlooking the majestic River Shannon, we are greeted by a man loving his life, a man positively beaming, a man whose every waking moment seems to be spend on the betterment of the city and county.
In his crow’s nest at City Hall — the brain centre for his ambitious five-year mayoral programme — the DEM looks perfectly at ease and is in upbeat form as he goes about his business. The lights, they say, haven’t gone off at Council HQ since Moran took the mantle, as he likes to burn the midnight oil. To lend support to these whispers, documents are neatly stacked in intimidating piles all over his desk.
But it’s not all drudgery. Landscape oil paintings of the French countryside vie for attention with the white water of the Curragower Falls outside, creating a still space conducive to important deliberation. And of course, there’s a cardboard cut-out of his loyal Irish Setter and Limerick’s First Dog, Henri, at the foot of his desk.
The Mayor’s office feels more like the creative command post of a multinational think-thank and I can see why he wouldn’t want to leave it. It’s a rather cosy and sprawling pad that I was in no hurry myself to vacate.
But I was on the clock, and the Mayor’s communications honchos too were watching the time.
‘If you can’t enjoy this job, don’t do it’
“You’re enjoying the role?” I ask, as he poses for photographs with King John’s Castle in the background.
“If you can’t enjoy this job, don’t do it. It’s probably proven to be more influential, in that sense, that you hoped it would be,” he tells me.
“A year ago, going into the election, people weren’t sure about the powers. But I mean, I have been talking to a lot of mayors, and they kind of said there’s two really important powers that mayors have that are often underestimated.
“One is the convening power. You know, the mayor says ‘I’d like to have a meeting about such a thing’, or somebody comes with a good idea, and you like it, so you are holding meetings to bring people together. The second thing, then, is the messaging that you adopt as to what and how you can use the role to amplify importance. I mean, you remember, one of the councillors said you shouldn’t have health in your manifesto?
“No, health is one of the most important parts of everything a local authority does. Where do you live? How do you live? Are you isolated? You have mental health issues? Quality of housing, all that kind of stuff.”
As regards the historic inaugural mayoral election last year, the Mayor mused that “we’ve also perhaps defined now how these elections will happen in the future”.
“I think a lot of people didn’t care about having manifestos, what they will do as mayor. I had been very detailed about it and that was immensely helpful.”
‘Your problem is you see the answer before the others’
There’s no doubt that Moran was out of the starting blocks selling his vision for the future of Limerick before he was even elected to the role of DEM. Does his far-sighted and industrious leadership prowess prove too much for those sailing alongside him, I enquire?
“I think there’s two things you can say. Firstly, if you grow up as a son of a builder, you are used to seeing two dimensional drawings and imagining what the house looks like, like we did all the time. We’d be looking at stuff at the kitchen table. My dad would be going out laying foundations with us as kids, so you’re looking at the bedroom where it is, but you’re actually imagining the 3D version.
“The second thing is, I got all this in my first job, I remember my first boss, a senior partner on Wall Street, saying, ‘John, your problem is you see the answer before the others and you have to let them catch up with you’. Equally, this is what architects have to do. They can see the building, they can see how the pieces come together, but they have to find ways to communicate the change.”
Moran’s enthusiasm is infectious, and his intuitive reasoning is stimulating to see in action. Together with his personable and down-to-earth approach, it’s easy to see why many are so taken with our new mayor – albeit bar a few in the Council chamber when things get heated in local authority meetings.
“Change is difficult,” the mayor suggests.
“Some of the structures are different. We brought down some people from the Department of Local Government about three months into the process, because councillors needed to have an opportunity to actually ask, ‘How’s it supposed to work? What can we do?’ There were questions like, can we force the Mayor to be at all the Council chambers? Can we take away the Mayor’s expenses if he doesn’t turn up?’
“Well, the Mayor doesn’t get expenses for being there, right? But it showed to me that there’s still a misunderstanding. Then what you find is that councillors probably haven’t known how it worked before. Councillors who have been there before are the ones going through that change. So it’s a bit hard for them. We’re trying to sort out issues that are important to them. So, I think these things will improve,” he suggests.
Dressed in ceremonial robes and led by a piper from City Hall into Limerick’s oldest building — St Mary’s Cathedral — for his inauguration last June, was one of the proudest of his mayoralty to date, Moran reveals.
“It was such a scramble what to do. The team here were brilliant. There was more ambassadors there than had probably ever been in Limerick and we’re doing something to showcase the city. Now they’re coming frequently. Honestly, I think people believe that the mayor is their mayor, and I don’t think they felt that way before.”
‘Only one failure I fear’
At his first meeting with the 40 elected Council members last August, Moran spoke of a new energy in Limerick since his election and how trying new things “is actually working”. He also warned local representatives at the time that failure could be a reality of his mayoral vision if they did not join him in taking bold steps.
“There’s only one failure I fear and that is a fear of failure, a failure to push to do something you’ve never done before because you’re not 100 per cent sure you can deliver. We can choose to play it safe or we can reach for an ambitious, bright future for Limerick and know how hard it is to deliver. I know what choice I want and which choice I believe the people of Limerick voted for,” he said at the time.
These words struck a chord with me. In all my years covering local authority meetings, I had never heard such candour and vigour from the top table.
“It seems natural to me,” John opines, when I remind him of this meeting.
“It’s funny but this is one of the biggest differences, I think, between the private sector and public sector. Maybe I’m in tune to it as I was in a government department first and you see the pressure on politicians. They’re always waiting to be shot if they make a mistake. It is intensely stressful. Anyone working to do anything for a government minister or councillor knows that, if they make a mistake, their mistake gets way more focused on because there’s another political opponent who wants to shine a light on it.
“I think if you’ve worked in a private sector organisation, and you’re doing a task and you’re not sure if you’re going to get it done on time, as soon as you feel like it’s going slightly off, your natural instinct is to tell your boss, because you need help get it back on track. It’s about getting people comfortable if they make a mistake to know it won’t get better by not telling people. We all make mistakes. Life is full of them.
“What I love now though is we’re seeing people say, ‘we feel we’re now part of Limerick and people want us to succeed, and we want to succeed’.”
American diplomat Henry Kissinger once observed that the task of a leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.
One year into his mayoral term, John Moran is certainly taking big strides down that road.
