IT’S all quiet round these parts at the mo with our delightful councillors off making happy memories on their summer break.
With the first year of their five-year term now behind them, our hardworking and long suffering local representatives deserve some well-earned R&R to destress, unwind, and dream up more crackpot notions for the months ahead.
And boy, what a first year the new batch in Limerick City and County Council have had!
I’m sure they are away somewhere now sobbing into their sangrias, weeping over lobster thermidor, and thinking ‘bugger local politics and John Moran, I’m staying on in Tenerife and never coming back!’
Ah yes, Mayor Moran and the way he might look at you. What a game-changer our directly-elected Mayor has been in Merchant’s Quay.
The tension over year one of the new term often reached fever pitch — it was hotter than the gates of hell, I tell you! Almost hot enough to necessitate a beach in the middle of the city. Almost.
It was so sizzling at times, you could have fried an egg down in City Hall, if you had an egg. I didn’t know where to look half the time it was so fiery.
There was meetings in County Hall uglier to watch than a bulldog chewing on a bag of spanners. I actually feel like pulling a Shirley Valentine myself, after the horror show of the past 12 months.
The wheels well and truly came off the Council clunker and everyone was thrown under it at some point or other. Poor Mayor Moran could very well still be lodged in the undercarriage with some of the bus-throwing that went on.
Councillors, Council management, and our Mayor now have a moment to breathe easy, reflect, and take stock of where things fell down and can be improved on going forward. I’m sure JP McManus and his team at the International Rugby Museum have a few suggestions for them on that one — but, let’s not go there!
It’s been a rocky first year, some knocking of heads together now needs to take place for things to have any chance of getting onto an even keel. Right now, Merchant’s Quay is dangling precariously over the edge of a jagged rock face and something has to give before all eyes are on LCCC for a circus of their very own making.
Despite some thawing between himself and Fianna Fáil, and the recent backing by Minister Niall Collins, I don’t hold out much hope for the hatchet being buried between the Mayor and Fine Gael any time soon – not anywhere good anyway.
Fine Gael’s DEM candidate Cllr Daniel Butler spoke on Limerick’s Live 95 recently about the importance of a leader’s ability to bring people with them. Citing the Mayor’s lack of prior political or civic leadership, he suggested that Moran still needs to develop these skills.
One thing is now certain, unless councillors step outside their comfort zone and meet the mayor halfway, nothing will change and we’ll be looking at more stagnation not transformation in year two of their term.
– Local Democracy Reporting Scheme
