FAIR play to you Mayor! It’s great to see a Limerick representative making national headlines for getting his Jerry Maguire on.
“Show me the money”, he says.
There he is now trying to shake Simon Harris’ coffers and we only a wet week into 2025.
In fairness to the man, he’s out there on the frontlines working for us. No easy task, and a thankless one at that if the Council chamber is anything to go by. As Mr Maguire himself so eloquently put it, “it is an up-at-dawn, pride-swallowing siege that I will never fully tell you about”.
It’s not all closing off The Crescent and throwing shapes with the neighbours for Mayor Moran, let me tell you. Shur, he’s only a savage grafter, up to 90, he is, most of the time.
I mean, when you consider the chancers we‘ve been accustomed to and their “the dog ate my homework” excuses, is it any wonder councillors are already trying to shaft him out the door. And now he goes and puts the Blueshirts’ backs up even more by going and asking their TikTok Taoiseach for a few bob.
The brass balls on this fella! Jesus, Mary and Joseph, did you ever hear the like of it. And more power to him, I say.
What did he do anyway, only ask Harris, the man with control of the national piggy bank, to give €2billion of the Apple tax fund directly to Limerick. Coming over all Dick Turpin like, Moran took the view that because the €14billion bonanza came from industrial operations in Munster, over half the money should go to the region.
True enough for him too.
There’s no flies on this bright boy. He’s a man with a plan and he put it to young Harris before the submission of the last budget that the bread and honey should be divvied up with €3.5billion going to Cork, €2billion to Waterford, €1billion to Galway, and €2billion to Limerick.
This, our gas man of a mayor, reckoned, would help rebalance the country’s economy which, he claimed, was “dangerously concentrated in the east.”
Limerick’s first citizen, the people’s mayor, even had it all worked out where the government shekels could be spent, thank you very much. And we’re not talking more vape emporiums and phone repair shops either.
Moran, in his missive from the Mount at City Hall, put it to the King of Social Media that the €2billion fund could be used with €200million for a development project at Colbert Railway Station along with €50million for a central library.
He also sought a further €140million commitment for the construction of a new building for the OPW and Revenue Commissioners at the city’s Opera Centre, as well as €250million for rail projects, €30million for a Museum of Gaming and other tourist draws, and €25million to “re-imagine Rathkeale”.
Limerick, he told Harris, is open for business, and working hard to progress ambitious projects. But look, some extra spondoolicks would never go a begging around these parts. I mean, if you’re not in, you can’t win.
In other words Simon, Mayor Moran was effectively saying, “help me help you”.
