MAYOR John Moran gave an impassioned speech to councillors this week to rouse them to join him in building a “better Limerick”.
Limerick’s first directly-elected mayor met with all 40 members of Limerick City and County Council this past Monday afternoon in County Hall to discuss his draft mayoral plan, outlined in the pages of this newspaper last week.
Moran spoke of a new energy in Limerick since his election and how trying new things “is actually working”. The Mayor spoke of a “positivity creeping in” before warning local representatives that failure could also be a reality of his mayoral vision if they did not join him in taking bold steps.
“I want to talk to you not just about success, but about failure,” he told councillors, a large segment of whom would shortly after vote to defer their meeting to discuss Moran’s plan to a later date so that they could more closely critique his draft plan.
“The word that has been bandied around the most about this draft programme is ‘failure’. I do read the newspapers. I have been told I will fail to deliver half of the objectives I want to see for Limerick. I’ve been told it is too aspirational, that it will fail, as if aspiration is a bad quality to have in a mayor.
“I’ve read in the papers that I’m trying to set councillors up for failure. I even heard somebody say on radio that I should scale back the ambition to include only smaller items we’re sure we can deliver on,” Moran told council members.
Nailing his belief in his plan to the mast, Moran told councillors that “Limerick needs more than safe choices”.
“I think we’re forgetting that the people of Limerick rejected that cautious approach in this election. They voted for more for Limerick, for more ambition, and for more delivery.”
He said that the people of Limerick wanted councillors and the Council to work together as a united team, “where our only priority is delivering what is best for Limerick.”
Mayor Moran told the Council chamber that he was elected because he is independent of party politics and urged the 40 councillors to work with him to deliver for Limerick.
“I want to see us all play our part in this. I want us to risk failure to achieve greater good. The prize for Limerick is to be the best we can be, and I think that’s worth the risk,” he beseeched them.
The Mayor told the gathered councillors that, in light of comments on his draft plan in recent weeks, “Limerick seems consumed by this failure”, adding that “there’s only one failure I fear and that is a fear of failure, a failure to push to do something you’ve never done before because you’re not 100 per cent sure you can deliver”.
“We can choose to play it safe or we can reach for an ambitious, bright future for Limerick and know how hard it is to deliver. I know what choice I want and which choice I believe the people of Limerick voted for.”
