Picture: Keith Wiseman
THE current situation on Limerick city centre’s Hyde Road is “a tale of two communities”, as one side of the street is designated a Regeneration area, while the other does not benefit from any of the scheme’s refurbishment projects.
Fianna Fáil councillor Kieran O’Hanlon has called on the council to write to Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government Alan Kelly asking him “to visit the area and look at extending Regeneration to cover all of Hyde Road”.
“It’s a shame to see one side of the road in such a state of dereliction, especially the shops,” he said.
At a meeting of the Limerick City and County Council Metropolitan District, Labour councillor Joe Leddin said: “You have a tale of two communities. The right side of the street is designated a Regeneration area and they are doing all sorts of works there, but the left hand side is falling apart. The shops in Weston is like a bombsite.
“Just this morning I had a call from a resident who told me ‘Mary across the road, her house is fantastic’, but she can’t get so much as a new window or a door.”
Cllr Leddin continued: “It is probably a unique situation in that the road not only divides the community, it also divides the electoral area. It’s farcical in terms of proper joined-up thinking.”
Cllr O’Hanlon told the Limerick Post: “Minister Kelly is coming to each local authority to look at housing and houses that are boarded up and everything, so I suggested that he would be invited to come up the Hyde Road and Hyde Avenue and look at the discrimination that’s going on there between one side of the road and the other.
“He has the power then to actually rezone or reallocate the whole question of where the border falls with Regeneration. It’s really a ridiculous situation because all of St Mary’s Park is in Regeneration, all of Moyross, all of Southill, but we now have a situation where only half of Ballinacurra Weston is in Regeneration. It has a serious impact on the quality of life of the people who are not in the Regeneration area.”
Cllr O’Hanlon added that the derelict shops off Hyde Avenue were attracting anti-social behavior, which was “dragging down the area”.
He concluded: “Regeneration are doing quite a good job on Hyde Avenue with the refurbishment and insulation of houses, but the poor people across the road then are looking over and they can’t get a pane of glass put into the house. The houses were built at the same time; they’re of the same poor quality.”
