{"id":209708,"date":"2025-12-01T14:08:14","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T14:08:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/209708\/"},"modified":"2025-12-01T14:08:14","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T14:08:14","slug":"limerick-mayor-defends-pace-of-city-centre-progress-amid-retail-decline-concerns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/209708\/","title":{"rendered":"Limerick mayor defends pace of city-centre progress amid retail decline concerns"},"content":{"rendered":"

MAYOR of Limerick, John Moran has defended the pace of progress<\/a> on revitalising the city centre, insisting that visible improvements are emerging despite ongoing pressures on retail and repeated calls from councillors for faster action.<\/p>\n

Responding to a mayoral question from Cllr Catherine Slattery about what steps he has taken to revitalise the city centre, Mayor Moran said work is ongoing to draft a tender brief for consultants to prepare a targeted ten-year retail development plan for the city centre.<\/p>\n

He added that a Vacant Property Incentive Scheme is being finalised for Budget 2026 which will apply to properties vacant for six months or more operating over a four-year period.<\/p>\n

Mayor Moran said: \u201cA significant allocation from the Mayoral Fund was committed to the detailed design, greening and public works for laneways and streets with Newtown Pery. The delivery of these did not proceed as I had hoped over 2025, but they remain priorities for 2026 now.\u201d<\/p>\n

READ MORE:<\/strong>\u00a0Limerick Civil Defence volunteers honoured at awards celebrating their decades of service<\/a><\/p>\n

He added that a new child friendly pocket park is planned for Parnell Street, including an agility and obstacle area and other landscape enhancements, creating a more attractive and family-friendly environment.<\/p>\n

Speaking at this week\u2019s meeting of Limerick City and County Council, Mayor Moran said national schemes for SMEs and retailers were being fully utilised locally and argued that the city centre was \u201cseeing a new dynamic\u201d despite the wider national struggle facing traditional retail.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m probably more optimistic about the city centre when you walk around at the moment,\u201d he said, pointing to what he described as early signs of regeneration around O\u2019Connell Street. He highlighted the transformation of the former Debenhams building, noting that its redevelopment had already lent \u201cimpact\u201d to the area.<\/p>\n

The Mayor said further advances would become visible in the coming months as a series of proposals\u2014including the Milk Market area\u2014move through consultation and towards construction. \u201cWe\u2019ll start to see more visible stuff when we start putting shovels in the ground,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Cllr Catherine Slattery said she was \u201cdisappointed\u201d by the response, arguing that the projects mentioned were already in train before the mayor\u2019s tenure.<\/p>\n

Mayor Moran countered that the Mayoral Office had already played a crucial role in preventing the closure of CCTV systems across the county. \u201cIf we hadn\u2019t had the Mayoral Fund, we would have had to seriously think about closing down CCTV cameras,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Cllr Michael Collins said the biggest setback to date remained the closure of the International Rugby Experience, which shut last December after just 19 months in operation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe most significant failure\u2026 is the closure of the Rugby Experience,\u201d he said. \u201cHas anything happened since our last meeting? Has there been further movement on what\u2019s to be done with that building?\u201d<\/p>\n

Cllr Tommy Hartigan added that newly published accounts showed the visitor attraction recorded a \u20ac1m loss in 2024 despite a \u20ac700,000 donation, following a \u20ac12m donation and further losses the previous year. \u201cIt’s a combined loss per annum over 2023-24 of \u20ac6m which Limerick City and County Council would have to have made up for if it had taken on the Rugby Experience so we would have to take from housing or road maintenance so to say we dodged a bullet by not taking on the Rugby Experience is no exaggeration.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cllr Joe Leddin said while he accepted the financial risks, the building could not be allowed to remain idle. \u201cIt\u2019s unacceptable to have that iconic building empty,\u201d he said, urging the Mayor to restart discussions and explore potential alternative uses. He added that the best thing we can do for the city centre is shop in the city centre.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cllr Daniel Butler added that bigger strategic measures were needed to respond to major shifts in retail patterns. These included developing a support structure for long-established family-run businesses facing succession issues and creating incentives to attract major brands back into the city.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to make a big effort I think to go out and attract traders into the centre, big brand names into the city centre and that will require some funding for that to happen. And in particular one of the biggest challenges for any new retail business is the fit out costs and I think we need to look at developing a fit out policy that looks at supporting a grant scheme that helps those businesses set up and maybe also I would suggest some sort of an incubator in relation to retail so possibly having a couple of models of business that we would take over.”<\/p>\n

Cllr Joe Leddin echoed this, pointing to the challenge posed by small unit sizes in streets like Cruises Street and noting that the large-format redesign of the former Debenhams building had enabled a new UK retailer to commit to the site.<\/p>\n

Pat Daly, Director of Services, concluded: \u201cThe only way to support the city is to actually get in the city and do that as regularly as we can.\u201d He encouraged wider use of the council-backed retail gift card scheme.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MAYOR of Limerick, John Moran has defended the pace of progress on revitalising the city centre, insisting that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":209709,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[79,18,19,17,7587,9213,31828],"class_list":{"0":"post-209708","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-limerick-city","13":"tag-limerick-city-and-county-council","14":"tag-mayor-of-limerick"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115644707807241543","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209708\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}