A PRIEST I know has taken up rugby. He’s scored a few tries but hasn’t made any conversions yet.
As a wise man once said, you got to get your first tackle in early, even if it’s late. This seems to sum up how the back and forth between Limerick City and County Council and the JP McManus Charitable Foundation over who should be responsible for the titular billionaire’s homage to rugby in his hometown has played out in recent weeks.
The biggest ruck this side of the storming of the sandcastles up at the Crescent, it looks like this one could roll on for a while yet.
The latest development in the International Rugby Experience (IRE) debacle has seen our well-capable first citizen blindsided by the Foundation as his offer to float the IRE by €100k a year for the next three years has been royally turned down.
The Council marked out to councillors at last week’s epic special meeting (in terms of length) all the ways this gift is a poisoned chalice that generations to come will still be paying for.
We are told it was always the intention to hand the IRE over to the Council and most of our local representatives are all for this – forget the financial burden or the realities of a vanity project gone terribly wrong that not even the IRFU or Munster Rugby want anything to do with.
The thinking from most councillors is simple. The International Rugby Experience is a big tourist attraction that’s worth €5.2m per annum to Limerick, if done right, so let’s make it work and look neither a gift horse nor a horse mogul’s gift in the mouth.
There is one particular councillor however who hasn’t been exactly gushing in his support to take on the loss-making red-brick pillar to international (not Munster, mind) rugby. That’s one Cllr Seán Hartigan.
“You really think that all of the 30k visitors per annum spend €173 in Limerick because they walked through its doors. How many were from Limerick and spent nothing but the €17.50 entrance and the bus fare?” he asked on social media this past week.
Mayor John Moran also injected a healthy dose of reason, telling councillors at last week’s meeting that there isn’t a magic fund of €40million that can be deployed to save this failing enterprise. Especially not if we want to do other things for Limerick and its future development.
Time and time again he has highlighted his concern over a stipulation on the McManus end that the IRE building can never be sold by the Council, establishing it as a lifelong liability in more than one regard.
With the Mayor’s €100k offer now rejected, and the building still in the hands of its current owners, it’s difficult to see what now lies ahead for the award-winning, skyline-defining site. Rugby is a game for big buggers, so let’s hope the big boys tackle this one pronto. If not, perhaps someone can propose it as a site for a pop-up Christmas market.
