NOT since Dunkirk or Normandy has there been such noise made over a bit of sand.
Mayor John Moran is not Winston Churchill but I certainly never considered him a man to “flag nor fail”. Then again, the blue-shirts in City Hall appear to want all-out war with our directly-elected Mayor, so anything for a quiet life, eh?
And so, as it turns out, this August there will be no fighting in the air, not on the landing grounds, the fields, the streets, or the hills. And there will most definitely be no beach to be fighting on, building sandcastles, or doing any other kind of business in Limerick City this month.
The Crescent beach has been stormed by Fine Gael’s enlisted Council members and, as Cllr Sarah Kiely will tell you, “history is written by the victors”.
What’s most surprising of all here is the massive U-turn on the Mayor’s block party on the Costa del O’Connell Avenue. Has the constant squabbling of our elected reps finally worn him down?
According to a statement from our first citizen, the city’s traffic won’t be diverted this year on The Crescent – saving upset for motorists and keyboard warriors alike – due to it not being good value for money.
This may be the case, but I struggle to believe there’s not more to it. This does not seem like a very John Moran move to me.
Not since the furore over the Council paying €25 to one city hostelry for a pot of tea have the humble serfs of the Treaty City been so irked.
Last year’s event left a very bad taste in many mouths (one may well question why they were eating the sand in the first place) and is the one memory that many more will take away from the first year of Moran’s mayoralty.
This feels like it won’t go away, but our leader and chief has always carried on regardless of the begrudgers, so it was a surprise when the statement from Mayor Moran last week was issued.
“All over the world, studies record how over and over again when we open up our public spaces, people respond positively. Limerick is no exception,” Mayor Moran wrote.
“However, early in July, after careful consideration of our team’s plans, it became clear to me that delivering the programme I hoped to deliver this year, even with the much-increased budget, on a value-for-money basis compared to last year, was not feasible.”
He continued that he “could not convince myself that paying for what was then planned for this year, especially with the costs of increased manning of road closures, was good value for money”.
“In this context, I believed the more responsible choice, and one I was not afraid to make, was to step back and reassess how we might deliver differently and better in future years.”
Moran, like Churchill, is from the school of thought that history will be kind to him, for he intends to write his own.
The statement released last week, however, did not seem very John Moran at all, so you would have to ask whether a proverbial sand gun was put to his head.
Whatever the case, he does have some allies in his corner.
Limerick’s Fianna Fáil Minister of State, Niall Collins, took to the airwaves last week in an attempt to rally the troops in City Hall.
“I think there’s no doubt that the present incumbent, John Moran, is very, very committed to the job. I think he deserves the active support of all our local authority members,” Collins told Limerick’s Live 95.
The views of many last year were that road closures in and around The Crescent “for a fake beach is an absolute disgrace”. Of course, you can’t please everyone, and many residents in the area did appear to be having a whale of a time.
You know what they say. “In the land of the ostriches, the blind are king. When politicians bury their head in the sand, ignorance rules the country.”
Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.
