FOLLOWING stormy beginnings, all is quiet on the City of Culture front this week.
However, Labour Party city councillor Tom Shortt believes that serious questions remain to be answered arising from the crisis.
According to Shortt, city councillors do not emerge well from the recent controversy.
“The majority of councillors buried their heads in the sand throughout the crisis. Councillors allowed themselves to be marginalised to such an extent that they lacked the political clout to secure seats for themselves on the board of City of Culture,” he claimed.
He insists that the issue of picking a representative for the City of Culture board must come before the Council.
“The City Manager had councillors eating out of his hand so obediently they risked being seen as tamer than the pigeons in London’s Trafalgar Square.
“They were so politically toothless it might be said that you would find more bite and genuine protest in the geriatric wards of Limerick’s St Camillus’s Hospital than in Limerick City Council,” he added .
In response, his Labour Party colleague, Cllr Joe Leddin commented: “I don’t accept that councillors buried their heads in the sand and I condemn the ageist comments made when we have misfortunate vulnerable people currently in geriatric care in our health system.”
Mayor of Limerick, Cllr Kathleen Leddin said, “City Council business should be dealt with in council chambers and not publicly through the media.”
Fine Gael councillor Diarmuid Scully commented, “Post-mortems occur after a death. Cllr Shortt should be aware that Limerick City of Culture is very much alive.”
