Seven years after an initial €3bn regeneration plan was announced for Limerick, just 140 units have been built or ungraded. Is the project working?
A plan to radically reform four of Limerick most deprived areas was launched in 2008 with a price tag of €3nn.
However, the initial public private partnership vision for Limerick Regeneration was drastically scaled back following the economic crash.
Seven years later, a more modest €300m project is being implemented but to date, just 100 or so new units have been delivered.
The initial plan was drawn up following the Fitzgerald report and involved the demolition and rebuilding of Southhill, part of Ballinacurra Weston, Moyross and St Mary’s park in King’s Island. It soon became apparent that this plan was not feasible given the country’s economic state and in September last year, the then Housing Minister Jan O'Sullivan launched the Limerick Regeneration Framework Implementation Plan with a time scale of ten years.
New apartment complex in Moyross
This scaled back project had three key pillars: physical, social and economic regeneration of the areas named. The bulk of the funding was attributed to the physical element with €250m ear-marked for this sector. It is hoped that through transforming the environment of these areas and ‘opening’ them up, it will aid social cohesion. This area has been given €30m. Jason Murphy is a Senior executive officer with the office of regeneration and he outlined some of the broad goals of the process...
The majority of funds are being given to the physical regeneration of these areas and that, predominantly, concerns housing. Units have been built in Southill and the city centre as well as projects such as changing rooms for local teams and sports facilities. However, anyone who knows these areas will be familiar with the sight of burnt and boarded up houses, and of terraces with gaps in the middle.
A section of housing in St. Mary's Park, King's Island
There was a policy of moving people out of these estates and while this has broadly stopped, people still continue to move. This has meant many of the areas have seen depopulation with the number of people living in Moyross shrinking by a third, for example.
Cathal McCarthy is involved with the Ballinacurra Weston residents group and is also chair of the Limerick Regeneration Watch and he outlined the effects of depopulation…
Social regeneration is quite important to the entire process, and is a theme that is bandied about quite often. Fr Tony O’Riordan is the parish priest of Moyross. He believes not enough is being done to tackle the issues facing each estate and would like to see specific plans put in place for them...
The down scaled plans were launched by Jan O’Sullivan, who was then housing minister and is of course a Labour TD for LimerickCity. This is what she had to say about the concerns of depopulation and its effects on the remaining community...
