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LEADER COMMENT: Limerick will not stand for cop-out on regeneration
THE Government stands accused of selling Limerick down the river, of giving false hope to thousands of people who were promised their lives would be changed for the better by the regeneration of the city estates that are a disgrace to this country.
It cannot be allowed to wriggle free from the commitments that were made then by pleading poverty now. It cannot claim that the country's financial woes preclude it from providing the funding needed to kickstart the regeneration, while at the same time insisting it remains "committed" to the process.
Let us turn the clock back to April 2007, when Minister Willie O'Dea told this newspaper that money was "no object" to the implementation of the regeneration plans. A general election was weeks away; always a good time to deliver good news.
Was this a country awash with money at the time? Absolutely not: nurses were warning of rolling work stoppages and the Taoiseach was telling them that their pay demands could not be met. Sound familiar? In the week in which the Government committed to the regeneration, the Limerick Leader's editorial read: "Governments past and present have consigned plenty of visionary reports to dusty filing cabinets: we trust that Mr Fitzgerald's recommendations will have a better fate, no matter who is in power to implement them. Should the current Government prevail at the polls, the people of Limerick will not be slow to remind them that a promise has been made. We expect that promise to be kept."
This week, we remind the Fianna Fail-led Government of their pre-election promise. Let us not be unrealistic: everybody has known for some time that that the original commitment of €1.7 billion in State funding for regeneration between 2009 and 2018 was going to be next to impossible to deliver. That is understandable and acceptable. But what we cannot accept is the Government standing idly by and allowing the regeneration process to unravel.
That is the scenario that, effectively, was painted by Willie O'Dea in comments made to The Irish Times on Saturday. Limerick's sole Cabinet Minister suggested that, seeing as the Government was broke, maybe the private sector could do something. These were his words: "Rather than let the thing grind to a halt because we can't afford to put in more than €25 million in a year, let's attract money in from the private sector and see some action."
This is a total cop-out, an abandonment of communities that were cruelly allowed to hope for a bright future less than three years ago. Minister O'Dea, as is his habit, went on to offer what might loosely be described as a hopeful possibility. He knows some builders who have "a couple of hundred million euro" that they want to invest.
Who are these builders, these "solid guys" who have avoided the miserable fate of others burnt by the property slump? And what will it take for them to invest their millions in some of the most underprivileged and neglected areas in the country? Either a miracle or a massive Government-backed incentive programme, but we have no information on either scenario.
A few days after his initial comments last week, Minister O'Dea was insisting: "Nobody should be under any illusions about the Government's determination to see out the regeneration programme."
The people of Limerick, and in particular those still living in the Regeneration areas or hoping to return to them, are entitled to treat that remark with the deepest of suspicion, if not with outright contempt. In fairness to Willie O'Dea, they should also note the deafening silence from other Fianna Fail TDs in Limerick on the subject. They may not have the influence of a seat in Cabinet, but they have a tongue in their heads. Is it too much to expect that they might use it to stand up for regeneration?
As recently as the third week of January, Minister O'Dea was promising to "kick some ass" for proper funding that would get regeneration going in earnest. Fast-forward two weeks and the only hope he can offer is the vague possibility of his builder contacts coming to the rescue. Did he have his own ass kicked in the meantime?
We have had enough talk, enough platitudes and broken promises. The Government must recognise that the regeneration of these communities is not a luxury to be cast aside in difficult times, but an absolute necessity. Like the City Council did decades before, the Government is only storing up trouble. If nothing substantial and long-lasting is done now, what will the human and financial cost be in years to come? Genuine improvements have been made in the time that the Regeneration Agencies were set up and in Brendan Kenny the project has a fine leader who, we are confident, will make a massive difference if he and his team are given the funding they need.
They, too, are realistic. They are not looking for untold millions – just enough to get meaningful building projects up and running in each of the four Regeneration areas this year, enough to allow people to hold on to their hope.
The next few weeks will be crucial for Limerick Regeneration. Fresh proposals will be submitted to the Government by March. We expect all local Fianna Fail deputies to make the point very forcefully to Brian Cowen and his Government that Limerick will not stand for a broken promise on this massive scale.
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Thursday 09 February 2012
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