LIMERICK’S 2025 Christmas festivities took an ominous turn this week as councillors foretold calamitous and horrifying consequences of what they perceived to be the inaction of Mayor John Moran.
Councillors were given a presentation at this Monday’s Metropolitan District meeting from the Limerick City and County Council’s festival and events team on Halloween in Limerick. However, it was another festive period that elected Council members were focused on.
Cllr Dan McSweeney raised grave concerns about mayoral orders which he claims have not been signed by Mayor Moran. The Fine Gael councillor suggested this was holding up plans for Limerick’s festive celebrations.
“I think we have to be open and transparent here today in relation to Christmas,” Cllr McSweeney told local authority staff.
“I’m aware that there are some mayoral orders that have been on the Mayor’s desk for some days that haven’t been signed. I also read something in relation to the e-tenders you’ve advertised for a Georgian Christmas market, with no information given on that,” he told the Council executive.
“Does it involve road closures? Does it involve what we had here in August with the fiasco in relation to road closures? Are we going back to the same rabbit hole in relation to this issue?”
Cllr Sarah Kiely (FG) deemed Christmas in Limerick as “the elephant in the room”.
“We’re talking about Halloween but we’re nearly on top of Halloween – and obviously you have a lot of work done on that – but where are we with Christmas? Have we people booked? We should now be booking people for next year not this year,” Cllr Kiely questioned.
“We’re going to be the poor relation for Christmas again this year.”
Independent councillor Ursula Gavan said that the Council executive was warned back in July that they were already “behind the curve” with plans for Christmas 2025.
“Now we’re in September and we’re well behind the curve. We should be looking at next year. We’ve already seen Waterford and Galway advertising their Santa and we still don’t know,” she said.
Cllr Olivia O’Sullivan (FG) took the view that plans for Christmas not being in place at this stage would be “an absolute disaster”.
Council members were informed by the festival and events team that mayoral orders for a Christmas procession were signed and plans are progressing.
They were also told that there could possibly be road closures around plans for the Georgian Christmas market.
“We will be doing a workshop with the members but the Mayor has looked for additional information,” councillors were told. “We are preparing that information and we’ll be sending it up to the Mayor’s office as requested.”
Cathaoirleach of the Metropolitan District, Cllr Daniel Butler, quizzed staff on the signing of mayoral orders.
Cllr McSweeney was not impressed to learn that nothing else had been signed off on for Christmas bar the procession, which was signed off by Mayor Moran last week.
“We’ve nothing else signed off by the Mayor. I think that’s extremely disappointing. We have a procession, nothing else. We don’t even have a route for it. I mean, we’re 100 days out from Christmas and to think we’ve only one item booked,” McSweeney fumed.
Independent councillor Ursula Gavan was equally haunted by the prospect of disappointing Christmas revellers.
Fianna Fail councillor Kieran O’Hanlon hit out at Mayor Moran blocking a main artery into the city with his beach installation on the Crescent last year and pointed to what he deemed as “dysfunction” in Council management.
“The Mayor’s programme is a separate thing to the Council. We didn’t approve the Mayor’s programme. He’s doing what he wants to do here. I think it’s very unfair for officials to come down here and make excuses for him not signing things,” Cllr O’Hanlon concluded.
