Let Limerick Be The Second City

26th Apr 2016

Why is everyone getting their jocks in a twist over a former secretary general of the Department of Finance saying that Limerick should be prioritised as the country’s “Second City”?

As far as we are concerned it already is. Limerick in second place is followed closely by Galway as the third city and Waterford as fourth. Nobody in Cork should have any problem with that.

And then struggling at the back of the pack like one of those hapless obese marathon runners who takes six and a half hours stumble the 26.2 miles it’s guess who?
 

Former Dept of Finance head John Moran is responsible for getting online taxi company Uber to bring 300 jobs to Limerick and not Dublin

Wearing a stained wife-beater vest and stumbling along in its soiled tracksuit pants smelling of stale chips and waving a knife in the air like a drunk O’Connell Street addict shouting abuse at ‘GAA culchies’ on All-Ireland final day only to collapse in a heap after crossing the finish line and then falling asleep, Dublin is firmly at the bottom of the pile when it comes to Irish cities.

We don’t need to tell you which city wears the gold medal.
 

Smokeless coal is improving Limerick no end

Obviously there’s a notable mention to non-runner Kilkenny that turned up at the start line in shiny lycra, hurley in hand, all ready to rub shoulders with actual bona-fides cities. Race officials had to pull it aside and quietly whisper in its ear:

“Sorry, sham you’re just a small town that exists to facilitate hen nights. This is a race for proper cities.”

Unperturbed it shoulders its way past the white tape and starts into the race sneaking up behind other cities when officials aren’t looking and stabbing it in the kidneys with the bás.

In all seriousness though the apparent boldness of Mr. Moran’s comments should not be unexpected. In the current power vacumn people in powerful positions like Mr. Moran are showing a bit of balls and donning their county’s jersey.
 

Guess who's in pole position

The Limerick native can see that Cork’s politicians are wedded loyally to their national organisations – the only independent in the entire county is Michael Collins in Cork West – and so are unlikely to rattle the “all roads lead to Dublin” status quo that sees 40% of all economic activity take place inside the M50 making Ireland the most capital-centric country in the EU.

With such pitifully poor shouting for Cork during the government formation talks Mr. Moran can see an opportunity for Limerick to sneak in and get more of the scraps allocated for “the regions” from Dublin’s overflowing table for Limerick than any other city.

The acting transport minister and Dubliner Pascal Donoghue was firm in his rasping rejection of any funding being made available for the upgrading of the glorified boreen that links Cork and Limerick despite the fact that fatalities regularly occur on its worst bends. The two cities are being kept at arms length from each other. But that’s the whole point.

As a Dublin convert Mr. Moran’s comments are designed to pitch cities like Galway, Limerick, Waterford and the People’s Republic against each other – it’s a classic divide and conquer strategy.
 

This is the current state of the main road between Cork and Limerick in Buttevant

It might have a silly name but the so-called “Atlantic Corridor” linking Galway, Limerick and Cork terrifies those who rule us from Europe’s gun crime capital – a city that itself is desperate to soak up as much of the entire country’s business as possible to pay for vanity projects like the LUAS (a street tram that allows drug dealers to get around more easily) which currently only runs for a few hours every Sunday.

Let Limerick be the country’s second city and the rest of them including Dublin can fight it out for the other places. Looking down at them from the top step on the podium we in Cork aren’t bothered who comes below us.