LOCAL businessman and first-time Fine Gael councillor Peter Doyle is passionate about Limerick and wants to see the city centre restored to former glories as a place for shopping and living, writes Limerick Post political reporter Alan Jacques after an extended interview with the recently-elected local rep from Castletroy.
A qualified management accountant who has worked in University of Limerick, Wang, Dan O’Connor Feeds, and National Food Ingredients in Limerick City, Cllr Doyle has already written to new Mayor John Moran and urged him to turn his attention to Cruises Street and William Street as a priority.
In 2013, after the closure of National Food Ingredients, Peter and three colleagues established a successful food ingredients business in the Annacotty Business Park called Key Ingredients.
He has been involved in local politics since 1980 and canvassed in all elections since. He now wants to seize the opportunity from within Council ranks to see better planning in Limerick.
“I have a passion for Limerick City and it saddens me to see the state of Cruises Street. I’m really focused on it and I hope the new mayor will assist us in that regard,” Cllr Doyle told me when I met up with him in Castletroy Neighbourhood Park.
“I’ve written to John Moran and asked him would he focus on William Street and Cruises Street. Obviously if anybody opens a new shop they should be given rates free for two years, and we need to get people living overhead the shops. The whole city centre is a big challenge.
“There’s important conversations that we need to have. I mean, you can go out to the shopping centre in the Crescent, it’s covered in and there’s no traffic wardens, there’s free parking around you. That’s what we’re competing with.”
Cllr Doyle has suggested to Mayor Moran that if a person spends €50 or €100 in the city centre, they should be given incentives to continue to shop locally, such as free parking discs.
He also considers the need for a park and ride system and more parking in the city as key factors in its future success.
“We need good living in the city. We need it to be an attractive place to live and to go to school. We need to make it an attractive place to shop,” Doyle asserts.
“If people analyse it, over the last eight years, the amount of good shops that have closed, whether they are ladies shops or men’s shops, has been very damaging to the city centre. That’s what we need to focus on. We need to focus on getting nice fashion shops. We have plenty of coffee shops in Limerick, but we need more to attract people into the city.”
He adds that “the more buses we have going into town, the better”.
“I’ve tried to explain to people that you don’t go into town on a bicycle to buy a new suit or a dress. We need parking for people to drive here so that you’re in town for an hour and can purchase whatever you need.”
‘We all want to fix the roads’
The City East representative takes the view that Limerick having its first directly-elected Mayor is a very positive thing for the city and county.
He believes too that Mayor Moran has the potential to be an excellent mayor and suggests that it also gives councillors a “focal point” for getting projects over the line for their constituents.
“We now have someone we can go directly to, whether it’s for the library in Castletroy, and say ‘John, can you help us with this?’ Even if it’s just a case of needing a new lollipop person in Castletroy, because it’s a bit chaotic down here in the mornings.”
“If we don’t have any joy with anyone in the Council, at least we can now go to John Moran and discuss it.”
The challenge of being a new councillor for this Fine Gael veteran of 40-odd years is one Doyle considers a “daunting task”, but it is clear he is more than up for the challenge and has the smarts and charisma to get things done. A warm and genuine character, he says he enjoyed the cut and thrust of the local elections, noting that people were “very courteous” to him.
“I had no trouble or grief. I didn’t have any hassle on social media and I thought people were very pleasant. As a rule, I ignore anything that’s really negative, because you’re only fuelling the fire. One or two people got upset if you put a leaflet in their door, but I have to try and learn from that and remember who those guys were who got upset.
“Most people are happy to get your leaflets, and I think really we need to try and walk in each other’s shoes. Everybody is trying their best.”
He explains too that he has found cross-party commonality with his Council colleagues in Castletroy, saying: “We all want to fix the roads. We all want a Garda station in Castletroy. It’s all bit of a no-brainer because we’re all on the one road.”
Castletroy is also where Cllr Doyle proudly calls home with his wife Patricia. Here they have raised their two adult sons, Kevin and Joe, who are both graduates of UL and former pupils of Castletroy College.
He says he is hugely grateful to those who voted for him in the June elections and confesses to having been initially a bit reserved about ever putting himself forward for the ballot in the first place.
“I’d like to thank those who voted for me, I hope I justified their faith in me and that in five years’ time I’ll be back, and I hope to see them frequently between this and then.”
