The Irish times reports today that "Limerick’s regeneration project is in jeopardy due to a scarcity of public funding and locals in the city’s most disadvantaged estates are becoming disillusioned". The funds referred amount to a staggering €3bn.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/features/2010/0209/1224264025064.html
Talk about throwing good money after bad. What the regeneration agencies want to do is bulldoze down one new town project and replace with in another one, on the presumption that we're so much smarter now that we were 30 years ago (NAMA anyone?).
According to the issues paper for the Limerick City Plan 2010-2016, The City Plan 2004 expected the population of Limerick City and Suburbs would increase from 92,000 to between 97,000 and 101,000 by 2006. It was also expected that the population of the area within the City Boundary would rise to over 55,000. However,the population within the City Boundary fell from 54,000 to 52,000 and the population of the City and Suburbs rose to a little over 95,000 persons. i.e. in a very short period 6,000
persons left the City to elsewhere in the Region and very little of this migration
settled in the suburbs of Limerick City. In fact there was also net outmigration from
the City and suburbs of about 4,000 persons.
Somebody do the maths? They're want to spend €3bn rebuilding a failed new town,for a population of approx. 6,000 when 6,000 have just left the city centre? Just imagine what half of €3bn could achieve in terms of investment, jobs, and city confidence if invested in micro-schemes throughout the city of Limerick.
