Mr. John A. Moran:

I echo that. What I find so exciting about this opportunity is that Limerick had been starting to call itself the city and county. This now means that we can drop the "city and county" and just call it Limerick council. With the mayor of Limerick, it becomes just one Limerick. There are 75,000 voters in city and county so it would be impossible for a county candidate to ignore the city and vice versa. The new development plan shows the real power when it is all working together in a polycentric way with neighbourhoods collaborating with each other in doing things. The programme for local government will set out the vision for the whole of Limerick and the mayor will have to deliver on it. Then the local councillors, who know best what is needed in their particular areas, will be able to negotiate and explain their case to the mayor. It then becomes no longer a negotiation with an unelected CEO but a negotiation with a person who also has constituents in those various areas that have been talked about.

Again, it is important to note that the scale is totally different. If we get this right we are talking about moving a local government's spending from a couple of hundred million euro, for example €200 million on water pipes, waste management and so on, into a potential spend of billions of euro over the course to 2040. If it is done well, this has the potential to transform the way the entire county works, including the standard of amenities.