THINGS have taken a surreal Bull McCabe twist down in Merchant’s Quay altogether.
Mayor John Moran, a former New York high-flyer, has bought a 70-acre plot of land out in Patrickswell, all with a little cajolery from a couple of Fianna Fail farmhands. Not a man frightened to get his paws dirty, he now plans to dig the rocks out of it with his bare hands and make a living thing out of it.
I’m sure Limerick’s first dog, Henri, will also enjoy dashing around his new expansive homestead.
However, the old faithfuls in Limerick City and County Council got in an awful strop over the proposed purchase. And some of them not even from the district at all, outsiders!
“Are these the same outsiders who took the corn from our mouths when the potatoes were rotten in the ditches?” as the Bull himself would conjecture. No, they weren’t the same shower in fairness, but the usual suspects in the Council chamber.
The lush pastures in Patrickswell were snapped up for €4million, a substantial portion of the Mayor’s discretionary budget for 2025.
These Council boys have had enough tae, and it’s not a friendly squeeze they are looking to give Limerick’s first citizen either. Moran can’t even till his fields in peace without half the Council bursting in on top of him full of all sorts of accusations.
We haven’t been privy to such drama around these parts since Miley got down to business in the hay loft with Biddy’s cousin, Fidelma.
Fine Gael councillor Stephen Keary had some choice words for Mayor Moran at last Tuesday’s special meeting on the mayoral fund, saying, telling the Mayor he would be “better off sowing spuds” than building his proposed housing on the Patrickswell site.
The Fine Gael man also proposed the Council’s top brass get kitted out with wellies, gloves, and straw hats to complete the local authority’s new rustic chic.
“Picking spuds is the only thing that will make money out there in the next couple of years. I’d say it would be good land to grow spuds,” the straight-talking Fine Gael man opined.
Cllr Keary also voiced concerns about Patrickswell turning into a countryside “ghetto” with gangsta smallholders and anti-social livestock lowering the tone.
“You need to be very careful how you go about your masterplan that you don’t create a bloody ghetto, because it’s long enough Patrickswell was a ghetto with the imbalance of social housing versus private housing,” he informed the Mayor, a native Patrickswell man himself.
When not being accused of favouritism or being a “smart-ass”, councillors demanded to see the Mayor’s little black book of private confabs.
There was such grunting, groaning, braying, and squawking that the meeting had to be adjourned for another day until all the facts were gathered. You wouldn’t have heard the like out of O’Mara’s Bacon Company on Anne Street back in the day.
They were as irate about the meeting being adjourned as they were about the lack of transparency they reckoned they were getting from Mayor Moran during it.
“I’m not accepting this,” Sinn Fein councillor Sharon Benson declared.
“Well, you have no choice, I’m chairing the meeting,” replied Fianna Fail’s Catherine Slattery.
“I propose that we continue with the meeting,” interjected Labour’s Elena Secas.
“Would it be possible that people be allowed to speak,” Cllr Liam Galvin (FG) offered.
Poor auld Paudie didn’t even have to put up with so much cross-talk in the Traitors’ conclave.
The law of the land finally rang true across the Dooradoyle chamber, but they’ll all be back again another day for another bout of twittering and squalling.
And all for the want of that lovely green grass.
– Local Democracy Reporting Scheme
