LIMERICK Mayor John Moran praised Council staff as well as local government ministers, TDs, and councillors for responding quickly and enthusiastically to the introduction of his historic new office and for helping make his first 101 days in the role a success.
Speaking at the publication of his first report to the people of Limerick since he took office on June 21, Mayor Moran said he was proud of Council Director General Dr Pat Daly and his entire team for how they responded to extra demands on them with enthusiasm and commitment.
He also praised and thanked Limerick’s local and national elected representatives, saying their “early and often” engagement, even when there were disagreements, showed that almost everyone was putting Limerick first.
“It is not easy to move from being a ‘policy taker’ in national terms to building out capacity to think more deeply about what is the right policy for Limerick, and to strategise how best to deliver on that,” Mayor Moran said.
“Yet even in these first 101 days in office, I have witnessed key actions delivered, some of which were not even on the radar when we set our initial task list.”
Limerick’s first citizen promised to continue to focus on improvement, and to introduce a more comprehensive delivery system within the Council to track and report progress across a wide range of projects.
He also committed to continued rigour and transparency around his own role, with regular reports to show progress in the implementation of his mayoral programme to the people of Limerick.
Mayor Moran said that the 101 actions listed in the report had given him an insight into the remarkable wide range of the delivery of Council services to benefit the physical, cultural, social, and environmental wellbeing of everyone in Limerick.
“As a whole, they also represent perhaps just the very first page of what I hope will be a quite remarkable story – a Limerick story, unique in Ireland, about what happens when a city and an entire county elects its mayor directly and acts as one giant, solid team,” he said.
Mayor Moran said the ending of the story had not been determined, and that everyone in Limerick was writing it now.
However he cautioned that “success is not guaranteed. We face formidable challenges in a number of key areas, and, also, quite frankly, from some people in positions of more significant power who, for their own reasons, have not yet fully embraced what they can do for Limerick to succeed.”
“I believe though that we can and we will succeed if we can work harder, work smarter, and work together.”
