Limerick agency defends €130m spend after housing plans criticised

THE CHAIRMAN of Limerick Regeneration, former Dublin city manager John Fitzgerald, has strongly defended its record against charges that it has little or nothing to show after spending €130 million over the past five years.

“The bulk of that was spent on the purchase of 300 houses elsewhere for people who wanted to get out [of areas such as Moyross and Southill] and the demolition of 900 houses,” he said.

“It’s not as if it was thrown in the Shannon.”

Responding directly to suggestions that more houses should have been built, Mr Fitzgerald said: “Houses were being burnt [in these areas]. You would have been out of your head to build more houses until the situation was stabilised.

“As I’ve always said, building houses is the easy bit. The less visible bit is the difficult bit – all the hard grinding work to build trust and create the mindset to make regeneration happen . . . It’s the most difficult public service job I’ve ever seen.”

The spate of criticism of Limerick Regeneration prior to it being wound up in mid-June was “intensely annoying and demoralising for the team, who have done a very successful job under a lot of personal pressure, and the local communities here”, he said.

Mr Fitzgerald, who is also chairman of An Post and the National Transport Authority, said it was always intended that the agency would have a limited term of five years, after which its work would be taken over by the local authorities.

It had been set up because of the “legacy of distrust of local government” in Limerick. But he believed this would change with the establishment of a new single authority for the city and county, incorporating a regeneration office.

Limerick Regeneration’s chief executive, Brendan Kenny, will be returning to Dublin City Council – where he had been assistant city manager in charge of housing – after a summer break. But six contract staff are being let go.

Asked why staff had been hired originally without going through the usual process, Mr Fitzgerald said it was an emergency, and “you don’t put an ad in the paper when you need the fire brigade”. Instead, he hand-picked people with “the right mix of skills”.

He explained that the agency’s function was to co-ordinate the work of others, rather than to act as a housing authority itself. However, “the ground shifted from under it” after private sector investment evaporated following the property crash.

He also pointed out that Limerick Regeneration had no planning powers and thus had to work through the local authority system, and this had caused “some delays” in realising its plans for the northside and southside designated areas.

Its first priority was to stabilise a volatile situation, where residents were intimidated by criminal gangs, and gain public confidence by engaging them in the regeneration process. This had been helped by drafting 100 extra gardaí into Limerick.

“That’s been hugely successful”, Mr Fitzgerald said, adding that “50 to 60 heavyweight criminals have been taken out. A huge amount of work has also been done in getting dysfunctional families involved in sport, such as Moyross United [football club]”.

In 2007, when Limerick had “the highest level of gun crime in western Europe”, young people were interested in “guns, drugs and horses”, Mr Kenny commented. Since then, “the good people in the community have come forward and taken charge”.

Moyross and Southill “used to be seen as irredeemable, but nobody says that any more”, Mr Fitzgerald said. “It would be a terrible betrayal of all the people who’ve put their faith in the [regeneration] process if it wasn’t continued and intensified.”

Mr Kenny pointed to the agency’s first housing scheme of 34 units – 22 for older people and 12 for families – at Cliona Park, in Moyross, and said a second scheme was to start on the southside “within the next few weeks” while others were “ready to go”.

But Mr Fitzgerald emphasised that building new houses was not enough in itself; there had to be parallel social and economic regeneration.