Good morning, all, it is great to be here with you all again on a personal basis to see old friends and also to be able to contribute to one of the most important debates for our country right now – the problem of infrastructure delivery.
But to be honest, it is not so great that we are still stumbling along with those problems despite being one of the world’s richest countries after a remarkable government and public sector economic turn-around over the past 15 years.
I am especially honoured to be here before you today as the first Directly Elected Mayor of Limerick and indeed the first such mayor in the entire country, at the Consulting Engineers of Ireland Annual Conference 2025. I wish you all the best for the rest of the conference and thank you for the invite to be here and for shining a welcome light on this topic.
I hope that the particular insights I have gleaned from the past year (my first in office) and those from my background as Secretary General of the Department of Finance, board member of the EIB and founding Chair of the Land Development Agency will enrichen the debate today and perhaps point to much needed new solutions.
- Today, I want to mention a few words about the issues being caused by the lack of infrastructure but also the opportunities if we can crack the nut of how to deliver it quickly.
- I want to talk about the key issue of housing.
- And then I want to come back to the new role I hold and how it can be used to transform the way local government can play a pivotal role in the solution.
Infrastructure
The city and county of which I am Mayor, and indeed our nation as a whole, faces a dual challenge: to accelerate the delivery of infrastructure and housing, while ensuring that growth is sustainable, equitable, and futureproof.
I do not really have a lot of insights to add about this first point other than point out the obvious.
The failure to develop our little country in a more balanced way has not just left us with a huge deficit in water infrastructure but also resulted in a reality that we have concentrated the lion’s share of our economic activity and ergo housing and demand on the side of our country with less rain and collection opportunities while the rainier west is lagging behind in development. And our solution is to bring the water to Mohammad rather than facilitate Mohammad to go to the water. While of course, we all realise the importance of the Shannon water project to Dublin, I understand though that the system will rather quickly run into new constraints. There should be no reason to support two Shannon water projects. It is beyond time to drive on with real investment to deliver the other more obvious solution – proper balanced development across the country which of course will take time to deliver.
But even at with its local supply of rain, in places like Limerick in the west where we should have the ability right now to turn on the tap for housing as job creation drives forward, such is the chronic under investment in the past that housing development is at a standstill for the only key growth county town selected by government, Newcastlewest. Despite a new temporary solution we have pushed for which helps things a little in the town’s suburbs, we have essentially to turn away developers wanting to delivery critically needed housing in the built-up areas of that town as there is no water connectivity capacity there and the temporary solution cannot work for those sites. I have to admit, I loved the suggestion earlier that for such welcome planning permissions, Uisce Eireann need to commit to put the right infrastructure in place within a short fixed timetable and the planning can get immediate approval allowing the builder to deliver straight away so that the homes are built and ready even as the water infrastructure catches up.
I could replicate that story for smaller towns and villages right across our county.
Askeaton for nearly 50 years has not had a sewage treatment plant and has had to pump untreated waste into the River Shannon.
During my own election campaign, one of the burning rural issues were homes all over both east and west limerick who had been under boil water notices for over 12 months. Thankfully, and thanks to Irish Water who responded to our political pressure most of these are now resolved.
But this is modern Ireland we are talking about.
We have to be better than this. To use the name of this very conference, we need a quantum leap.
I was listening to someone on the radio this morning saying that we need to do more to capture and use rainwater directly. Who could disagree. But as I listened, I remembered that back in the early 1970’s my dad who was a builder, when building our new farm house, had installed a huge underground tank in the garden under the patio to capture rainwater. This was used in toilets and many of the taps in the house and we always knew as kids which taps were to be used for drinking and which were not. Sadly, our excitement about the new swimming pool we thought we were getting was short lived. In truth, he was no visionary, just a practical and forward-thinking builder.
The solutions are there. We just need to realise we have to allocate money to pay for them, whether financed by water charges or general taxation, we need to invest and drive them on.
Equally, when it comes to transport, we all know that we cannot continue as before. Yet right in front of my eyes in Limerick is an existing under-utilised train network – about five lines converging in the city’s central train station which could deliver some of the most impactful and effective ready to go transport oriented development the country has seen, given hectares and hectares of public land along or close to those train lines.
And yet I have been arguing for this since my early time as Chair of the LDA and even before as I tried to advocate for a 30-year plan for Limerick, like that Kathryn Meghen was talking about earlier, based on this transport backbone. Nonetheless, government has still not been willing to make the decision to invest at scale and Limerick spends much valuable time arguing that it is now time for a quantum leap to commuter train rather than being asked to struggle along with buses for a couple more decades. We all know buses involve a fight about who should get priority on scarce roads and never work as well to drive rapid growth of scale.
And yet right in Limerick in recent months, we have just the perfect case for more local delivery capacity. While Dublin still debates for years about how a metro and how it might be installed, Irish Rail and our own roads team working closely together have almost completed in a matter of a couple of years at eye-wateringly low costs the reopening of the disused Limerick to Foynes freight line. We will now be able to plan for passenger trips by train to the Ryder Cup in Adare and will soon have completed the Adare bypass opening up the road for completion all the way to Foynes. This was achieved only by a close cooperation, sharing for example the delivery and installation of rail bridges as most efficient between the rail and the road project, both users of each new bridge. A cooperation that could only be done well as it was led locally.
These are the success stories. We just need more of them.
There is reason for great optimism if we can replicate them and if the Minister’s words this morning can be converted into action to support that.
Housing
Now a word about housing.
I feel a little every day I go into the office on this like one of those contestants on Ireland’s Fittest Family trying to scale that high wall at the end.
The stark challenge I face in Limerick is that whereas here in Dublin the overall growth target is for every four homes, another one has to be built by 2040, down in Limerick, as indeed in other regional cities, for every two homes, we need to deliver another one – an even much more demanding challenge.
So, in essence, we are supposed to be moving at twice the growth of Dublin, but instead of being given a head start in the race and extra funding, we are handicapped with extra dead weights.
- Firstly, we have to find ways to overcome the natural magnetic forces of capital and investment towards the big city on the East which makes it harder to attract much needed capital into building and construction.
- Secondly, while lower rents and housing prices they might seem like advantages to attract talent to satisfy the hunger of incredible jobs growth amount our businesses and industry, they make the viability of new housing much more challenging.
- Thirdly, and not the last issue by any means, is the fact that one of the most centralised government systems in Europe has insisted in adopting a one size fits all in designing subsidies and building schemes which makes the maths on the viability spreadsheet even more daunting for us if not impossible.
It should not require a PhD in financial maths and modelling to understand that if you taking the land cost out of the equation, have roughly similar construction costs and financing costs and the only variable is rent or sales price, then you have the capacity to generate and justify greater upfront capital investment capacity in an area of higher rents and sales prices.
To be honest, and it might not be a popular view, this becomes all the more ridiculously hard an equation to solve if the government funding schemes require you to provide the few homes you are providing at a market discount (so called cost rental) fixed at 25 percent - which removes even 25 percent more of the available capital, even in situations where the tenant might have had the income and willingness to pay a fuller market rent in return for tenure.
It should be quickly obvious, that if you want to see twice as much building happening, want it to happen as compact growth in cities where rents are lower (or even in less attractive neighbourhoods in Dublin for that matter) you will not achieve it this way.
And we then wonder why builders and the LDA are not flocking to build much needed apartments in Limerick?
But while it might all seem tough to solve, let’s not forget one important starting principle - housing is a fundamental right.
Where the market cannot or will not deliver it, it requires innovative state led solutions. In fact, what we are seeing in Limerick is that one-off housing and smaller residential schemes across the county are not doing too bad in terms of quantum of delivery (that is of course, in areas outside those with no infrastructure) but the growth targets for those areas are already slower. However, worryingly, in our urban area, especially toward the centre of our city we are way behind.
Like everyone else, we are dedicated to increasing the availability of affordable and sustainable housing options with clever use of government funding. But we need system flexibility which is not currently available to us to recognise the different dynamics of our city.
Through strategic partnerships and innovative solutions, we must move with strong intent to address the housing crisis and ensure that everyone has a place to call home.
This includes the construction of new affordable housing units, the renovation of existing properties, and the implementation of green building practices to ensure sustainability.
We will work together with stakeholders to streamline our local planning and approval processes as much as we can to accelerate the delivery of housing projects.
But the numbers remain stark. Our annual delivery for housing in Limerick is averaging about 800 against a demand originally estimated in Housing for all at 2,500 for all of the county.
The report from the Housing Commission went further and estimates a national housing unmet demand deficit of 235,000 dwellings.
Up to now, we have been forced to work with the first set of numbers in making the case for government intervention and investment, but based on household distribution, Limerick City, which accounts for 2.1 percent of households in the 2022 Census, one could therefore estimate a local deficit of a further 4,865 dwellings on top of our existing demand projections of 7,000 homes to be delivered during my term alone. That is a total of almost 12,000 homes in five years for the city area. Remember last year’s delivered number was about 800 across the entire county.
As we gather here and face down those statistics, we must confront an undeniable truth: Ireland and Limerick is not building enough homes. In Limerick alone, we are now short of many thousands of homes. Frankly, the existing approach has not been working and like the Housing Commission says, I say we need a reset.
We now need are all types of homes; private homes; affordable homes; cost rental; and social housing. I note particularly that we estimate the demand for housing for 1-2 person households could be as high as 55 percent whereas our existing stock of such homes is less than 25 percent.
So frankly put, for me, the delivery of any homes in the right place for that type of home is a welcome step.
Every day, we look at the problem we have to remember these shortfalls are not just statistics; they represent the lived reality for thousands of families and individuals.
Every day that any public servant puts off to tomorrow something that can be done today to advance a housing project, we are prolonging the misery of hundreds of families. Young adults are no longer able to afford to buy as they were when I was that age. Importantly, for me, while many of our policies seem to have targeted that cohort, they are by no means the only cohort affected and those who rent must find solutions too, which arguably in the short term are more important as they can help both cohorts straight away. With lower rents, rental accommodation becomes more affordable and renters who still want to buy can put aside a little more for a deposit and this will be effective as long as we can stem the rise or, better still reduce, house prices over the short to medium term.
We have to remember every day a public official delays a decision or weeks or months are consumed with yet another approval step at central government, it is forcing a vulnerable adult to stay extra nights in a hostel. Forcing a child to live another night in a hotel. Leaving parents looking at their kids and worrying about the notice from the landlord that the rent has just gone up again or worse that they want to bring an end to the tenancy and everyone knows that there is no where to rent for the same rent anymore.
We are now in a crisis that demands immediate and decisive action. I am heartened to have heard the Minister’s resolve to move decisively on this.
It’s also about ensuring that housing is not just available, but that it’s liveable. It’s about creating vibrant, mixed communities where people of all backgrounds, incomes, and ages can thrive.
It is, therefore, about ensuring funding across different government departments can be delivered rapidly to local authorities, the guards, to schools, to the HSE to ensure that amenities and services keep up with housing. Or better still grouped together and given in one package to a local area.
Why for example would funding for social housing only fund those parts of the entire building to used for qualifying housing and not allow a local authority to design in a community space at the ground floor, a commercial space up along the building or even rental accommodation for incomes all the way up the income deciles?
Officials forced to run around and make different cases to convince a whole range of different stakeholders to provide bits of the funding for much needed development is an unnecessary waste of energy and most importantly time. Even worse where a project needs to wait until a department stakeholder opens up a competitive process which might then become the delay to starting – even if the project is ultimately successful and had all of the other money already banked.
The solution is simple. Let’s fund neighbourhood construction in its entirety and let local governments just get on with delivery.
If we cannot do that, we face the risk of having money to build more homes but not building the right homes or indeed the right neighbourhoods in the right places—near transport hubs, near amenities—where people can live and work in close proximity.
It is our collective responsibility, as leaders to step up now to find new ways to confront these challenges and new ways to trust each other more as a team.
When preparing for those challenges, we must imagine the legacies, both individual and collective, that we want to leave behind us.
I know I want my legacy to be an innovative approach to management, not being afraid to try out new approaches, particularly when it comes to wrestling the grip of Limerick and elsewhere from the housing crisis - and to ultimately be known to be a Mayor of action.
Why governance needs to change
So enough of all of the problems, what might some quick fix solutions be?
This was exactly the question which formed the basis or the discussions we had in Limerick when I was pleased to welcome the Taoiseach and other Ministers and their teams to Limerick for the first Limerick Mayoral and Government Consultative Forum in March.
That meeting and those that will follow over the next number of years allow us in Limerick City & County Council a unique opportunity to manage the selection and delivery of our priorities in Limerick – almost a sub-cabinet committee for Limerick.
The Forum will also work with our unique statutory Project Ireland 2040 Delivery Board which I hope to evolve as an integral regional part of Minister Chambers’ Infrastructure delivery unit.
As the Forum, we in Limerick took the initiative as there were no ground rules to follow. In agreeing the agenda, we prioritised our high level asks and changes needed to deliver those. Like Minister Chambers for me it is not just about funding but about reform of how we deliver.
We set out the key projects which need to be unblocked, at the highest levels of government, such as the OPW building which is key to our Opera Square project and the funding needed for activation of the Colbert Quarter project in the city. Only be delivering these and other key projects can Limerick to hope to reach the government’s own targets for our county.
Most of those priorities were already identified as key items in my More for Limerick programme. Because importantly they formed the core of my manifesto for the election they therefore already have strong democratic legitimacy and acceptance among the residents of Limerick. The Taoiseach acknowledged and appreciated the importance of that.
Following those meetings, we were pleased to be the only local authority asked to send our full list of ‘asks’ to Government Ministers on the National Development Plan, to identify for them what is required for us to be able to accommodate 50,000 new resident of Limerick City and its suburbs.
These asks are catalysts for growth, they are transformational in scale, both locally here in Limerick, regionally across the Midwest and nationally.
Not surprising, we have identified housing delivery as the key outcome and chosen three high potential neighbourhoods to transform – Colbert Quarter, the Northside (Moyross) and out historic city centre (Kings Island and Georgian Limerick).
I have made it clear that I would like to be able to have our development company (Limerick 2030) play a much-needed and larger role in housing delivery, in the face of market failure, just as it did ten years ago when we badly needed top of the range office space in our city and developers were not prepared to take the risk.
We want essentially to develop a housing delivery body which will provide affordable rental accommodation for all cohorts, not just those who qualify for social housing. We are turbocharging the delivery of that plan at the front end to deliver what we call SMART Homes – short-term modular affordable rental transitional homes
The upcoming housing demands of workers for the Ryder Cup makes it an imperative to deliver up to 2,000 of those (17 percent of our total 2030 needs) rapidly on state lands and to secure the relevant national government approvals to allow us to borrow to invest in the units. Once the Ryder Cup is history, by 2028, we will have our own centrally located new homes like others have done when hosting large competitions like the Olympics.
To avoid waiting for initial government funding to drive on with this, I already have dedicated some 15 percent of my Mayoral fund allocation to kickstart the various work streams. Our Council supported this approach. This has meant that much more rapidly, we are at a stage where:
- A Preliminary Business Case is to be submitted very soon to Government.
- We have found a regulatory route for delivery without needing a change in national planning rules.
- A Site Assessment of Limerick City and County Council-owned residentially zoned land banks is well underway.
- We have been tendering and securing external to help in the planning and delivery and selection of vendors with a view to submitting our first planning application later this year.
We are also committed to unveiling a prototype of what is possible with SMART Housing, and showcasing this to the people of Limerick this summer. The residents of Limerick need to see and understand what this innovation entails.
This is the perfect example of a new innovative approach to deliver on our challenges, which can and should be done as it has been validated in last year’s election.
But at the heart of this approach is a step change that local government in Limerick needs to be allowed do things differently and needs to be trusted and funded differently to do that.
I shall be in my role for another four five years – or if re-elected, in which case I serve for a maximum of ten years.
I believe that within those terms, we can make some critical changes to how things work if national government actors are willing to come on that journey with us.
I make no apology for being impatient. Maybe it comes from being a cancer survivor. But every day I go into the office, I am acutely aware that the clock is ticking on my term. Today, another day is passing and tonight as I go to sleep I need to gauge how much or how little has been achieved.
But do not get me wrong. I am hugely positive for the future. I am greatly encouraged by the strong sense of hunger for change in Limerick – and indeed now at government levels. I am met daily by people sharing words of encouragement and urging me to be brave and continue making bold choices.
So what might those bold steps look like.
- Firstly, Limerick should be financed using a combined funding envelope (a capital block grant of several hundred million at least). A lot has been written about the unique Limerick Mayoral Fund but that is a mere 7 million a year against a capital financing need of 4 to 5 billion over my term.
- That block grant can be safely managed and monitored using the Ministerial Forum I mentioned above.
- The Mayor and Council can make recommendations to that Forum (if we are not trusted to make our own decisions) and use it to supplement our existing development levy funds to turbo charge and facilitate the funding of larger projects, and especially to crowd in private financing and cover risk transfer.
- We must simply agree what the rules are which we should follow and central government must then exercise oversight not control every step along the way with a long list of gating prior consents. Spending codes and similar rules must of course be followed by us too but why is a committee of officials who do not live in Limerick considered better able to gauge how to do that and establish value objectively than their counterparts working in Limerick?
- And these rules of engagement must also be written flexibly to allow us to depart where needed and where we can justify it. Naturally, the easier option for us is to follow the rules if they make sense but the type of local discretion embedded in the hierarchy of EU rules must now become a feature of Irish local government using Limerick as a pilot.
But if I have one compelling point today it is that you cannot deliver more without human resources. You cannot ask a Mayor to lead the transformation of an entire organisation but tie their hands behind their back by not allowing them the funding, flexibility and authority to resource and lead that transformation.
It is no mistake that the first initiatives by two key government Ministers themselves have been to try and set up new delivery units in their departments. Why if it works there, can I not do that freely in Limerick?
To deliver successfully in Limerick a capital programme about three times the size of last year to catch up with embedded deficits cannot simply be done asking the same team to keep doing more with the same. That will just lead to burn out and ultimately failure which none of us want. Even the exercise of generating widespread efficiencies needs to be managed by a dedicated team not by people already struggling to keep up with the day job.
I do believe we can do much better on this front but we need to face the challenges with realism. You cannot ask an organisation to quickly deliver to up to three times more capital projects in a year than it has been doing and expect the same team to be able to do that immediately. We have to find ways to on-board staff or consultants to help at a much faster pace. This is a particular issue in local government as each new hire (and sometimes replacement hires) still needs to be approved by central government. As I have said over and over, we cannot mix up oversight for control. Once an increased capital or spending budget is approved, allowing for inflation, there should be pre-clearance on the payroll budget and CEOs or Director Generals in our case in Limerick given the authority to manage to that total however they feel best suits their organisation.
It is only in this sort of way, we can change the way we go thinkgs to make a difference to those kids in that hotel earlier.
We can and must do better, and doing that means doing things differently.
Limerick has never shied away doing things differently. With the right support, we will act swiftly and decisively to deliver projects. We want to play our part to set a standard for what co-ordinated ambition and delivery can look like.
We want to use the unique position we have with a democratically elected mayor and the supporting new elements of government which come with that to trial a new way.
In closing, let us remind ourselves that the work we do here today will shape the world we live in tomorrow. The matters we discuss every day in meetings and at events such as this one are not just issues to be tackled - they are opportunities to create a better, more prosperous future for all.
I am filled with optimism for the future. Ireland is a great little country in the overall scheme of things but we need to pull together to do better on this.
Limerick is ready to build. I am ready. Indeed, we are all ready to deliver More for Limerick.
We just need to be trusted and let get on with it.