SOME councillors are “quite happy” for Limerick’s mayor to “do whatever he wants” and function without oversight.
That was the view of Fine Gael councillor Daniel Butler at a special meeting of Limerick City and County Council on its Annual Service Delivery Plan.
During a heated exchange with Mayor John Moran, Cllr Butler, who also ran for directly-elected mayor in 2024, said he has always provided oversight – “a key role” of a local representative – during his 12 years on the Council.
The City West representative took the view that it was a councillor’s duty to ensure the Council executive deliver for the people of Limerick the right way.
“What are we at? We requested the Mayor to work with us and to compromise, and it’s taken all this time for this to happen over a couple of words. It’s just becoming absolutely infuriating at this stage. Let councillors do their job, provide oversight, and to ensure that we deliver housing,” Cllr Butler insisted.
“We are doing what we need to do and the Mayor has said, ‘Do we not trust the Mayor or the executive who deliver housing?’ Well, I have to say, the housing record so far isn’t great.”
Cllr Butler said “there is a lack of trust in that the record will show there has been a complete lack of delivery”.
“We think we need to revisit what our roles are here, what the function of the Council is, and get on with our business and end this mindless mind-numbing activity of arguing over silly things, when there’s clear compromise available to us all to move forward and deliver.”
Instead of this, Cllr Butler suggested, “we become bogged down in words, documents, strategies, fancy ideas with no delivery”.
Cllr Dan McSweeney (FG) concurred with his party colleague’s comments, saying: “I am never going to stand in the way of reasonable proposals to deliver housing, and people can twist that whatever way they so wish, but I will stand up and say that day in day out. I know our district in the Metropolitan area have never been found wanting in relation to showing that leadership when required.”
Mayor Moran fired back, saying he could not allow “what has just happened to pass without comment”.
“I had to sit through lectures to myself and other councillors with the outrageous suggestions that we want to do anything without proper accountability and supervision of what we do. There is an established framework in the Local Government Act that sets out very clearly how that should be done. I reject that suggestion.
“I’m also sitting here flabbergasted to hear Cllr Butler lecture me and the executive as a group on the poor delivery of Limerick City and County Council, which is ranked 31 of 31 local authorities for the delivery of housing over the last number of years.
“To say the new Director of Housing and myself are in some way responsible for this, when he has been holding the executive, and indeed, responsible as mayor, for the record of the Council for the last number of years. And, more importantly, is a member of the Government parties that have to stand over the record of housing they could deliver in the last six years. That’s why we’ve been talking about this for two hours, to try and resist that kind of an effort to stop us doing what we should be doing. I’ll leave it there,” the Mayor hit back.
Cllr Butler, a former Limerick Mayor, said Moran had a right to this point of view as, “he, after all, has a long history himself in relation to Government departments. He was former chair of the LDA himself, and didn’t deliver too much there either. So I can talk about his track record as well of lack of delivery. He’s been in the role as Mayor now for two years and hasn’t delivered. What has he delivered?”
“Nothing,” Cllr Butler concluded.
– Local Democracy Reporting Scheme