'Limerick is ready': Calls for development of 'major sporting infrastructure'
Limerick has produced world-class athletes. Now we need facilities to match, says Olivia Scully Hahne, Regional Development Officer, Athletics Ireland
OVER the years Limerick has rightly been touted as the Sporting Capital of Ireland. We are proud of our reputation as one of Ireland’s great sporting cities. We celebrate our hurlers, rugby players, rowers and soccer players, to mention but a few.
Athletics has produced athletes who have represented Ireland at European, World and Olympic level. Ahead of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, four members of Ireland’s 23-person athletics squad; Sarah Lavin, Sharlene Mawdsley, Thomas Barr and Kelly McGrory, were based or trained at UL. That represented almost one in every five athletes on Ireland’s Olympic athletics team. It is difficult to identify another single athletics facility outside Dublin that supported such a concentration of Paris athletics Olympians. If ever there was evidence that Limerick has the athletes, coaching environment and demand to justify investment, surely this is it.
How can one of Ireland’s great sporting cities still not have a dedicated public Track and Field facility? Limerick City currently relies overwhelmingly on one athletics facility at the University of Limerick. UL has served Limerick athletics well, but it is a shared university, sporting and events facility. It is already at capacity for athletics access and does not provide the complete Track and Field infrastructure our sport requires. Munster Rugby currently has access to the Field area, meaning our throwers have nowhere to train for Javelin, Hammer, Discus or Shot put. The facility also currently lacks High Jump and Pole Vault facilities.
Limerick City and County Council is currently finalising its Local Sports Plan 2026–2030. Encouragingly, the Draft Plan already recognises the need for a public athletics facility in Limerick City. Athletics Ireland strongly welcomes that commitment. However, Limerick now has an opportunity to think considerably bigger.
Athletics Ireland’s submission asks the Council to examine a bigger opportunity: a Limerick City Athletics, Indoor Sport & Events Campus. Alongside a complete outdoor Track and Field facility, Limerick should examine the feasibility of a regional indoor athletics and gymnastics arena incorporating a 200m track, sprint and hurdle facilities, jumps, appropriate throws-training provision, warm-up and strength-and-conditioning areas, Para-sport facilities, treatment rooms and spectator provision.
The objective should not be to compete with existing sporting infrastructure. It should be to strengthen it. Limerick has an extraordinary sporting identity across rugby, GAA, soccer, rowing, athletics and many other sports. A dedicated athletics facility could provide a common physical-development resource through which those sports collaborate rather than operate entirely within separate infrastructure.
A purpose-built athletics and performance campus could provide structured opportunities for other sports to access sprint and acceleration development; running mechanics and speed training; endurance and conditioning; jumping, landing and plyometric development; strength and conditioning; movement screening and physical preparation; rehabilitation and return-to-sport programmes; and coach education and cross-sport knowledge sharing. Athletics needs a dedicated home precisely because its benefits extend far beyond athletics.
Ireland’s weather makes indoor provision particularly important. Yet Munster and the West do not have a full indoor athletics arena comparable with the National Indoor Arena in Dublin. The West of Ireland is also lacking a large conference centre. Designed intelligently, such a facility could provide flexible conference and exhibition space and support other sports, creating activity and revenue throughout the year.
Limerick already has another extraordinary asset, the Great Limerick Run, which attracted more than 19,000 entrants in 2026. International models demonstrate how successful mass participation running events can help support permanent athletics infrastructure and community sport. Why shouldn’t Limerick examine whether we can do something similar?
This is also about the kind of city Limerick wants to become. We have a growing metropolitan population, the University of Limerick, the River Shannon, excellent motorway connections and Shannon International Airport on our doorstep. Limerick should be positioning itself as Ireland’s alternative capital, a strong regional city capable of attracting people, investment, education, conferences, tourism and major international sporting events.
Sporting infrastructure can be part of that ambition. The recent European Athletics Championships in Birmingham demonstrated the extraordinary appetite for athletics among Irish supporters. Irish athletes performed superbly and thousands travelled to support them. Ireland has the athletes. Ireland has the supporters. However, Ireland currently lacks sufficient infrastructure to credibly pursue many of the major international Track & Field championships.
With Shannon International Airport nearby and excellent road connectivity, an appropriately designed facility could ultimately position Limerick to attract competitions, training camps and sporting events that our current infrastructure simply cannot accommodate. That doesn’t mean constructing an enormous international stadium tomorrow. It means planning intelligently today so that we don’t eliminate tomorrow’s possibilities.
Major sporting infrastructure takes years to deliver. It requires feasibility work, site selection, design, planning, costings, governance and funding. National programmes such as the Large Scale Sport Infrastructure Fund can provide substantial capital support. But Limerick cannot wait for the next funding opportunity to open before deciding what it wants. We need to develop the project now so that when the opportunity for national investment comes, Limerick is ready.
Community participation and international ambition are not competing objectives. The same facility can serve a child discovering athletics, a school PE class, a recreational runner, a Masters athlete, a Para athlete and an Olympian. It can serve Limerick clubs on an ordinary Tuesday evening and, if we plan correctly, potentially welcome major competitions in years to come.
Build for the child who wants to run today, and do not design out the possibility of Limerick hosting the world tomorrow.