Tensions between Limerick’s mayor John Moran and its councillors were laid bare this week in an extraordinary online post.
Moran, in that post, questioned whether there was a strategy to make his role “unbearable” and “create sufficient pressure” that he might “simply walk away”.
The people of Limerick voted in favour of a directly elected mayor in a 2019 plebiscite, creating the only office of its kind in the country.
Less than two years into his term as mayor, Moran is feeling the pressure of this nascent role in Irish politics.
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The Limerick man, a former Department of Finance secretary general turned independent politician, was elected to the role in June 2024 and he is the first person to wear the now-directly elected mayoral chain of office.
The rocky start to this experiment in local democracy raises the question: is the role of directly elected mayor workable in Limerick and ultimately elsewhere in Ireland?
The experience so far might indicate it is not, though there are arguments against this, not least from Moran himself, despite the evident difficulties.
Writing on his website, Moran said a “minority” from Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil – the largest parties in Limerick City and County Council – “have consistently opposed” significant initiatives he has proposed. He also complained of “repeated procedural obstacles placed in the way of my routine work”.
It came amid a row over the council’s corporate plan, which was approved by councillors last week in Moran’s absence as he had to leave a long meeting before it ended for health reasons.
Fine Gael’s councillors in Limerick said this week that “robust discussion is part of responsible governance” but they “remain committed to constructive engagement” with the mayor “to ensure the new system works effectively for everyone”.
The powers of the mayor are limited.
Moran ultimately needs the approval of a majority of councillors for proposals developed by the mayor, including the annual budget.
There have been disagreements between Moran and the council’s director general Pat Daly, who retains responsibility for staffing, with differing interpretations of the functions of the two roles.
Moran has faced challenges in realising ambitious projects from his mayoral programme. Requests to central Government for resources to progress his modular housing initiative and a rail link to Shannon Airport have not met outright rejection, nor has he been offered everything he asked for.
Fianna Fáil Senator Dee Ryan, who contested the 2024 mayoral election that Moran won, said the situation at the council was “not a great advertisement for how local democracy can change across the country”.
However, she said the directly elected mayor role can work, though accepted there was a need for “tweaks” to the legislation.
She suggested that whoever was elected, even if they were from one of the big parties, would have “come up against hurdles”.
Ryan said Moran has a “huge vision for Limerick and in my view we have to support it”.
“I appreciate not everyone would share his views,” she said, but added that differences should be debated and teased out.
“Really it’s like being in a marriage. You’re not going to get it all your own way on every occasion and that goes for the councillors as well as for the mayor. But you have to unite around that common vision for a bigger, thriving Limerick.”
Labour TD Conor Sheehan called for an early review of the legislation underpinning the office of mayor, arguing that “at the heart of this dysfunction [at the council] are clear weaknesses and ambiguities in the legislation”.
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During an interview on RTÉ Radio on Wednesday, Moran himself said “there is a need for a very quick review”.
The Department of Housing and Local Government has since given no indication it is open to an early review.
The department said the legislation provides that the Minister would review the “operation and effectiveness” of the office three years after its establishment in mid-2027.
“The period of three years was viewed as the appropriate balance between needing a mechanism to assess the new office in a timely way, while also allowing time for the new arrangements to bed down in Limerick,” the department said.
During the RTÉ interview, Moran argued that the mayoral role in Limerick was a “Catch-22 situation”: the public expected the mayor to be “able to deliver” but they did not “have the right to allocate resources”, “assign tasks” or “assign budget across the year”.
In a statement to The Irish Times, Moran said: “There are many things which could change for the better but if it is a question of how to get more delivery the real change of power needed is to that of HR [human resources] and resource allocation currently left with the DG [director general].
“The administrative side of HR for general staff could be left with the DG but resource allocation and appointment of the DG and senior directors should be given to the Mayor and in the case of the DG in consultation with the council.”
Despite the issues he has raised Moran said the role of a directly elected mayor “absolutely” works, arguing that Limerick is “already reaping strong benefits”.
“When I talk about things that need to be fixed it is to fine tune the model and make it more powerful. It does not undermine the core benefits of the change,” he said.
Aodh Quinlivan, a senior politics lecturer at University College Cork, was a member of the expert advisory group that supported the work of the 2022 Dublin Citizens’ Assembly, which was set up to consider the type of directly elected mayor and local government structures best suited to the capital.
Quinlivan suggested the idea of a directly elected mayor for Dublin was “stalled” with “no urgency or enthusiasm from Government”.
“It gives them a lot of cover if the Limerick one is seen to be troublesome and not working out,” he said.
Quinlivan said the “key” issue was the relationship directly elected mayors have with councillors “because if they don’t work together, it falls apart completely.”
This happened in Bristol in recent years where councillors felt “sidelined” and triggered a referendum that saw the role of directly elected mayor scrapped in the English city, he said.
Might Moran have had an easier time in office if he had been a member of Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil?
“I think that factors in,” Quinlivan said.
He said the history of mayoral elections, particularly in the UK, is that independent or “maverick-type candidates” often get elected and “that invariably causes tension”.
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“Even if you think about it kind of simplistically: you have a directly elected mayor with a five-year term of office. That is denying five councillors from the main parties having a go at the mayoralty under the traditional system,” he said, referring to the arrangement where the role of mayor rotates to a different councillor each year.
Quinlivan said Irish local government lacks powers and this needed reform before the introduction of directly elected mayors. In the absence of this, he said it was “kind of the analogy of two bald people fighting over a comb.”
So is having directly elected mayors workable in Ireland?
“I think it is with two provisos,” Quinlivan said. The first condition is reform of the local government system and the second is “to try and close off any of the loopholes and the vagueness that might be in the legislation [for a directly elected mayor].
“But certainly I think it’s worth persisting with,” he said.
