The Limerick Active Travel Coalition is a Directly Elected Mayor (DEM)-focused campaign group consisting of the Limerick Pedestrian Network, the Limerick Cycling Campaign, the Limerick Cycle Bus and others interested in making Limerick a safer and healthier city. The group is discussing key transport, safety and liveability issues facing citizens in Limerick city and county with DEM candidates.
We asked the candidates where they sand on the following topics
- Priority 1 Commitment – If elected, I will develop my Mayoral Plan in partnership with the people of Limerick, including measurable indicators of progress.
- Priority 2 Commitment – I will commit to restoring Limerick’s city and towns, using a compact growth place-based approach.
- Priority 3 Commitment – I will commit to ensuring that all transport and public realm design projects are inclusively conceptualised and designed.
- Priority 4 Commitment – I will commit to ensuring that Limerick becomes a Healthy City and County as set out in the WHO Healthy Cities movement, with all Mayoral policies underpinned by public health and health equity for all citizens.
- Priority 5 Commitment – I commit to delivering safe, accessible and sustainable transport options for residents of the City and County.
- Priority 6 Commitment – I will ensure Limerick becomes a Child Friendly City and County where the voices, needs, priorities and rights of children are at the centre of policy making.
This is what they said
Priority 1 Commitment – If elected, I will develop my Mayoral Plan in partnership with the people of Limerick, including measurable indicators of progress.
Sarah Beasley
Aontú
Sarah-Beasley
Aontú
✅ Strongly in favour
Decision are being made nearly 100% of the time without any engagement with the citizens of Limerick.
Daniel Butler
Fine Gael
✅ Strongly in favour
Frankie Daly
Independent
❌ No Response Yet
Ruairi Fahy
People Before Profit
✅ Strongly in favour
With a new budget coming alongside the position of mayor it’s important that the budget isn’t directed into vanity projects or to create avenues for future board positions or personal gain for the mayor after their time in office. The only way to ensure this is to work with communities to decide how that budget should be spent. Using the same processes that are currently in place isn’t enough though as the existing public consultation system can often become a game of local power dynamics where the loudest or most well connected voices can have an outsized say over their local areas. Expanded public consultation should encourage the development of communities and try to be deliberative to avoid the danger of negative feelings building up in those communities. Communities should be able to propose developments they feel would enhance their area as well as could provide benefit to the county and mid-west as a whole. As part of a response to these proposals the council should work to explain the reasoning behind any decision on the proposal, best practice and ideally proposed alternatives that could meet the same need if the proposal isn’t possible for reasons of budget, planning or any other reason. At the moment there seems to be outsized decision making power held by business owners and council staff creating a feeling of voicelessness among many in the county. There’s room in the legislation to create more dynamic and representative committees as part of the position of mayor and we would seek to use that, and even push that to its limits, to allow decision making to its lowest possible limits and incorporate as much local knowledge as possible.
Laura Keyes
Rabharta
✅ Strongly in favour
I have been developing my mayoral programme in partnership with the people of Limerick for the past two months and will continue to do so. I am a strong believer in co-creation. Co-creation is where the people most impacted by decisions are involved from the very beginning in designing the plan. I use a person-centred and bottom up approach where people are considered the experts in the things that apply to them rather than an expert-centric and top down approach. I have nearly 20 years of experience in developing strategy and plans in this manner. It is proven to be more efficient than an expert led approach as the result meets the needs of the people the first time around. It also gives people agency and ownership of decision that impact them, resulting in more connected and engaged communities.
Brian Leddin
Green Party
✅ Somewhat in favour
Whoever is elected will have a mandate to deliver based on commitments made in their campaign. Further engagement post election can be undertaken to help put detail into the plan but it is important that the mandate given to the Mayor by the people of Limerick in the election itself is respected.
John Moran
Independent
✅ Strongly in favour
I have already had significant consultation and open house sessions on my draft Mayoral plan to already do this in partnership with the people of Limerick even in advance of getting views of the new council. My draft plan (in my MoreForLimerick manifesto) has over 300 actions which will have been given to the people of Limerick to vote on. I have indicated I will be having quarterly public meetings to report on progress during the 5 year term as I did at the Department of Finance with the troika Report Cards.
Caitríona Ní Chatháin
Socialist Party
✅ Strongly in favour
I am an activist to the core, and my mayoral candidacy and campaign is built around the principle of organising at grassroots and mobilisation. Empowering people to advocate for themselves and their communities is key. A vote every few years is clearly not enough. Real democracy and real political participation involves people uniting around key issues and putting pressure in order to make gains for themselves and their communities.
Helen O’Donnell
Independent
✅ Strongly in favour
Elisa O’Donovan
Social Democrats
❌ No Response Yet
Maurice Quinlivan
Sinn Féin
✅ Strongly in favour
Dee Ryan
Fianna Fáil
✅ Strongly in favour
The DEM legislation provides new structures to support the mayor which gives great opportunity for me to ensure engagement with the active transport representatives. Active travel and safe travel is a foundational principle of my People and Communities Strategy.
I’m very aware of the importance the role of the active transport representatives in shaping and promoting more active travel in our county. I will certainly be providing greater engagement with Active Travel and Safe Travel.
You will be aware of my initiative as CEO of the chamber in running a series of independently chaired consultative fora for all stakeholders (including active transport representatives) during the development of LSMATS. The Planning Department has subsequently initiated additional non-statutory consultation in the preplanning stage. I will ensure that this problem is expanded to improve engagement.
My Mayoral Programme will contain a number of innovative measures aimed at more accessibility and engagement not only by the mayor but by the directors of function and a greater focus on gathering and disseminating key information on Active transport needs.
Conor Sheehan
Labour
✅ Somewhat in favour
Gerben Uunk
Party for Animal Welfare
❌ No Response Yet
Priority 2 Commitment – I will commit to restoring Limerick’s city and towns, using a compact growth place-based approach.
Sarah Beasley
Aontú
✅ Strongly in favour
At present the lack of proper planning will stall this type of development without strong management.
Daniel Butler
Fine Gael
✅ Strongly in favour
Frankie Daly
Independent
❌ No Response Yet
Ruairi Fahy
People Before Profit
✅ Strongly in favour
The development of Limerick city on a car dependent model with American style shopping malls and industrial estates has created a difficult environment for proposing an alternative as complaints about rain and wide dangerous roads are used to shut down debate on an alternative as well as being an excuse for buying larger and larger SUVs. Luckily Limerick’s population is still relatively small and there is plenty of land, much of it owned by the council or the state, that can be used to build highly permeable and more dense communities built around “communal luxury” of shared parks, community centres and other amenities, rather than individual isolation of semi detached housing with front and back gardens and personal parking spaces. Building increased density on these lands doesn’t mean building extreme high-rise apartments as our infrastructure can’t handle them and the increased building costs make them more attractive to speculators than people looking to build a home. There are great examples of dense, livable mid-rise in Paris, Barcelona, Venice and other places that we can take inspiration from rather than looking at Manhattan, Hong Kong or Shanghai. Efforts to encourage compact development in our villages and towns has mostly revolved around using the development plan to limit developments to those centres.
While this is necessary it has created a push factor for many from these areas where the housing crisis is also a major problem that some people were previously able to escape by saving money through building homes on their family land. A return to the previous system of scattered and ribbon development isn’t the solution though we need to try to ensure that lands used for agriculture near towns and villages that are zoned as residential are actually built on. This was all outlined in the Kenny report over 50 years ago but the failure to implement its recommendations is a major component of unaffordability of land to develop on. While the new “Residential Zoned Land Tax” may free up these lands over time we should be working with farming families to try to exchange land with those whose land is now zoned as residential to speed up the process and hopefully stem rural decline and abandonment. Housing is only one arm of this compact growth though as we are now reaching a tipping point as businesses like pharmacies, pubs and local shops are closing down as the self-employed owners retire and their children have no interest in keeping the business in the family. We want to engage with this people and try to find a way for the business to keep operating on a co-operative or other worker operated model to ensure good wages and conditions for those operating the business while also keeping the service running for the community and discouraging people from hopping in to their cars to go into the city or nearest bigger town for day-to-day essentials. Finally we need to see an improved public realm specifically around paths to make the most of the advantages of rural living where people should have better access to nature. This will also require work to restore rights of way and to ensure farmers get involved in schemes to improve biodiversity and restore ecosystems so less of rural Ireland is given over to a ryegrass monocrop.
Laura Keyes
Rabharta
✅ Strongly in favour
I am very much in favour of compact growth for our city and towns. I want to bring an abrupt end to building on or near flood plains. I want to expand the proposed blue green ring for Limerick city to be a forest ring similar to what is being done in Madrid. The benefits of this include curtailing urban sprawl but also have added benefits of protecting Limerick City from the very real climate change adverse effects of flooding and high winds. We have dereliction, underuse of properties and vacant brown field sites in out cities and towns. These need to be prioritised for development. I want to bring in a planning requirement of a net biodiversity gain of 10% for all developments. This will help focus developers on brown field sites, amongst other benefits. We need a mixture of housing types including apartments, one bed houses and step down housing – these are all very suitable for urban spaces.
What we don’t need is gentrification of our urban spaces as this will price people out of them. We need a considered approach that supports people to live in our urban spaces and rejuvenates our city and towns. Limerick used to have a nursing home in the town centre near the People’s Park. This made sense, elderly people were close to amenities and could continue to participate in their community. We need to bring back this type of person-centred planning. Compact growth means the people of Limerick can access services more readily and reduce car dependency. It also means that abandoned sites get developed making Limerick more visually appealing and safer. Compact planning can also foster outward facing communities which promote health, wellbeing and community spirit. In doing so we also need to pay close attention to the history of Limerick and the natural environment. We can design with nature and history.
Brian Leddin
Green Party
✅ Strongly in favour
I am strongly in favour of supporting development densities that in turn make high frequency and high capacity public transport systems (both rail and bus) affordable to deliver, and to maximise the potential of walking and cycling in our urban areas.
John-Moran
Independent
✅ Strongly in favour
The presentation given the evening of my More Liveable Limerick policy launch was clearly a very strong commitment to a polycentric Limerick based on four 15 minute neighbourhoods in the city and compact growth in the towns of Limerick all connected with public transport to reduce car dependency in all locations. I f elected I shall be pushing to remove the single designation for “Limerick city” which includes housing, job creation etc. from Annacotty to Mungret and instead look for four areas to better measure things and ensure the central area is indeed seeing the right levels of growth. After that, I suppose all I need to say – is Colbert Quarter (but not the version of last Nov/Dec in St Josephs)
Caitríona Ní Chatháin
Socialist Party
✅ Strongly in favour
Government policies have led us to the situation we’re currently in where dereliction blights our city at a time with record precarity in living spaces and an absolute derth of places where people can meet at all hours of the day in accessible, warm, and cost-free community spaces. While the principles of compact growth align with a vision of limerick that works for working people, as DEM I’d look to reassess any policies set forward so far, to make sure that they are truly committed to those principles, and not to simply making Limerick attractive to investors at the cost of truly accessible living and community spaces.
Helen O’Donnell
Independent
✅ Strongly in favour
Elisa O’Donovan
Social Democrats
❌ No Response Yet
Maurice Quinlivan
Sinn Féin
✅ Somewhat in favour
Dee Ryan
Fianna Fáil
✅ Strongly in favour
Compact growth is a key objective of my spatial strategy and indeed is widely accepted as the best strategy for our county and the nation. There will be hard policy choices and hard planning decisions to be made. Consultation, community and commitment to principles are the key to making these decisions.
Conor Sheehan
Labour
✅ Strongly in favour
Compact growth is essential to revitalize our cities and our towns both residentially and economically. Limerick has suffered due to the donut effect primarily driven by out of town shopping centres. The decision to include only a minute number of residential units in the Opera Centre development is a missed opportunity and should be reviewed.
Gerben Uunk
Party for Animal Welfare
❌ No Response Yet
Priority 3 Commitment – I will commit to ensuring that all transport and public realm design projects are inclusively conceptualised and designed.
Sarah Beasley
Aontú
✅ Strongly in favour
We have to be sensitive to all groups without exclusion but also not to put people at risk
Daniel Butler
Fine Gael
✅ Strongly in favour
Frankie Daly
Independent
❌ No Response Yet
Ruairi Fahy
People Before Profit
✅ Strongly in favour
The positive impacts from universal design should make it a no brainer at this stage. Every study I’ve seen has shown the benefits from addressing the needs of people with reduced mobility, women, migrants and other groups have an outsized positive benefit for society as a whole. I had heard numerous accounts of how difficult the city was to navigate from people in wheelchairs but it wasn’t until I had to push a buggy through the city that I understood just how littered our footpaths are and how much space is given over to private interests on them. Similarly our wheelie bin per house method of waste collection can make some footpaths completely impassable for people in wheelchairs, motorised scooters or even just with reduced mobility. As the “digitalisation” plan continues in the council it’s important that groups that are less able to use technology aren’t further marginalised and face-to-face and phone services are maintained for allowing people to give feedback on plans. We don’t have a strong culture around public consultation in Ireland with expert and “stakeholder” views seemingly elevated above those of citizens but I want to see this change and a large portion of the mayoral budget should be directed towards making this happen, going out, collecting lived experience from people, learning from it and trying to improve our public spaces in a way that all people can enjoy them.
Laura Keyes
Rabharta
✅ Strongly in favour
The underpinning of my mayoral programme is accessibility. One of my campaign slogans is “If we design for the least able it benefits everyone.” Universal design is of paramount importance to me. As a person with lived experience of disability, I know all too well how inaccessible the world we live in can be. “Accessibility for all” is one of the 5 mission statements in my mayoral programme. In my mayoral programme, I outline how accessibility goes far beyond accessibility for people with disabilities but also extends into feeling safe to enjoy public amenities, events and spaces being inclusive for all walks of life, websites and forms being accessible, council data being FAIR (findable, accessible, interopable and resusable).
My party – Rabharta – has two main underpinnings, one of which is equality. We can’t have equality without accessibility. As an example of my commitment to accessibility, we can look to the launch of my mayoral campaign. I chose an online format so that transport and proximity would be removed as an attendance barrier, I had an ISL interpreter, closed captions and spoken descriptions of all visuals. The launch event was recorded, transcripts of the speeches and short clips with subtitles were prepared and published. I want to bring a culture of thinking about accessibility first, to Limerick city and county council. Therefore, my commitment to the people of Limerick goes beyond the ask here of ensuring that all transport and public realm design projects are inclusively conceptualised and designed. I want all projects and routine work to be inclusively conceptualised and designed. Nothing about us without us.
Brian Leddin
Green Party
✅ Strongly in favour
John Moran
Independent
✅ Strongly in favour
I think it is clear from the Colbert Quarter initial design approach that this is indeed my philosophy. It is perhaps less well known that the kids in Scoil Ide were involved in the design competition of the garden at the Hunt Museum and indeed the finalists scored in the competition based on how well they reflected the views and preferences of the kids – which is why we now have a chess set and a sensory garden.
Caitríona Ní Chatháin
Socialist Party
✅ Strongly in favour
As a candidate running on a socialist feminist platform, directly confronting the ways that a profit-based investor-focused approach has failed all of the working people of Limerick, but especially those who are most vulnerable to those failures – women, migrants, LGBTQ+ people, children, those with disabilities – is not only only one of my main focuses, but the lens through which I think the vitality of Limerick as a whole must be seen. When we make our spaces work for those with specific needs, we make it work for all of us instead of settling for crumbs. Community spaces that are accessible to those with disabilities are more accessible to everyone. Streets that are well lit for those who are statistically more vulnerable to intimidation are better maintained for all of us. Public transport systems that are built on the knowledge of transport workers and transport users instead of narrowing them to the most ‘cost effective solutions’ means that they work better for everyone who uses them. A socialist feminist mayoralty would mean fronting people-lead organisations that have done the work on the ground to understand how best to organise our spaces for us, and giving those groups the platform to ensure universal inclusivity in design, instead of relying on a top-down approach that uses the right words with no action.
Helen O’Donnell
Independent
✅ Strongly in favour
Elisa O’Donovan
Social Democrats
❌ No Response Yet
Maurice Quinlivan
Sinn Féin
✅ Somewhat in favour
Dee Ryan
Fianna Fáil
✅ Strongly in favour
I fully adopt this priority 3 as above. Not only do I want every community to have amenities for active travel but they will have to be safe – by design.
Conor Sheehan
Labour
✅ Strongly in favour
Cities in the way they are designed often compound inequality. Safety and security is fundamental to quality of life and stops women, children, minority groups from using public spaces. A key concern in public spaces is lighting and a nighttime vulnerability assessment must be conducted by the Mayor to address this.
Gerben Uunk
Party for Animal Welfare
❌ No Response Yet
Priority 4 Commitment – I will commit to ensuring that Limerick becomes a Healthy City and County as set out in the WHO Healthy Cities movement, with all Mayoral policies underpinned by public health and health equity for all citizens.
Sarah Beasley
Aontú
✅ Strongly in favour
I am a strong advocate for people with disabilities and the overriding consensus is that they need their vehicles to facilitate a healthy lifestyle and have inclusion. We need to definitely improve our public transport system and bring costs of usage to an attractive level so that it would be utilised more. The people I have spoken with would use public transport more if the infrastructure was in place and that people had a ‘stop’ on most streets in and around estates.
Daniel Butler
Fine Gael
✅ Strongly in favour
Frankie Daly
Independent
❌ No Response Yet
Ruairi Fahy
People Before Profit
✅ Strongly in favour
Limerick is plagued by poor air quality, whether from cars, solid fuel burning or polluting industries along the estuary. While we want to see real green industries, free and frequent public transport and a mass state-led retrofit program there aren’t enough monitoring points to see the impact of these changes. The cost of installing “good enough” air quality measurement instruments has come down dramatically in recent years and while not as accurate as more expensive instruments they can be used to give an indication of where harm from air pollution is at its worst and plan actions for addressing them. People Before Profit has also proposed bans on advertising of fossil fuel based vehicles as well as SUVs which, even if electrified, can have outsized impacts on air quality. A major health issue in Limerick is around drug dependency which is creating a perception that the city is dangerous leading people to avoid using public parks or going into the city centre. We need to learn from the successes and failures of health-led approaches to drug use in other countries and work to implement them here in Limerick while also tackling the causes of drug dependency rooted in poverty, poor mental health supports and general inaccessibility of health care. Tackling these underlying issues can only be done with a focus on reducing inequality as well as tackling the housing and healthcare crises that create the conditions for so many negative health outcomes.
Laura Keyes
Rabharta
✅ Strongly in favour
My chosen profession and field of study for the past 20 years has been public health. I have spent my career design interventions, identifying risk factors, assessing the impact of new initiatives, writing legislation, policy, strategy, all aimed at improving the health and wellbeing of our population and the eradication of health inequalities. This is experience that I will bring to the office of the mayor. Evidence based planning with promotion of public health at its core is and has been the day to day of my career. That married with a human rights and person centred approach is how I have been trained to bring about positive change. A commitment to Limerick becoming a healthy city and development of Limerick city and county being underpinned by a public health objectives is not only one that I am happy to make but it is also one that I am qualified to deliver and one that is of huge importance to me.
Brian Leddin
Green Party
✅ Strongly in favour
The over-arching reason for me entering politics in the first place is to work towards creating a healthy and happy society. Every policy idea I’ve advanced is with this in mind. As Mayor that will be as much a priority as it always has been.
John Moran
Independent
✅ Strongly in favour
I cannot reveal it all now but from the outset one of my three pillars was a More Healthy Limerick. For me that is not just UHL and health services but a healthier lifestyle for all citizens (with the emphasis on “all” – your health outcomes in life should not be a function of your Eircode. By the time you compile the survey you should have more proof on how aligned I am with this objective.
Caitríona Ní Chatháin
Socialist Party
✅ Strongly in favour
A study by the ESRI showed that renters in the private sector have poorer health outcomes compared to homeowners. Precarious housing has a detrimental impact on human health as well as a person’s mental wellbeing. Building public housing on public land is something I will push strongly for. Furthermore, my vision of a city and county is one where public services are well-resourced, accessible and free at the point of use. This extends to public transport, housing, healthcare and childcare.
Helen O’Donnell
Independent
✅ Strongly in favour
Elisa O’Donovan
Social Democrats
❌ No Response Yet
Maurice Quinlivan
Sinn Féin
❌ No Response Yet
Dee Ryan
Fianna Fáil
✅ Strongly in favour
Active travel and safe travel is a foundational principle of my People and Communities Strategy. My Mayoral Programme will contain a number of innovative measures aimed better environmental planning and monitoring and better responses to health issues in our county. For me equity is the key – every citizen in Co Limerick should be protected equally by high standards of environmental planning, monitoring and response.
Conor Sheehan
Labour
✅ Strongly in favour
The Directly Elected Mayor must ensure that all aspects of Government’s clean air strategy are implemented. Limerick has the highest incidence of asthma in Ireland. Environmental Health is a huge issue and the Mayor must engage extensively with Uisce Eireann to ensure that towns like Askeaton and Kildimo can be removed from boil water notices. This is not acceptable and goes completely against the UN sustainable development goals.
Gerben Uunk
Party for Animal Welfare
❌ No Response Yet
Priority 5 Commitment – I commit to delivering safe, accessible and sustainable transport options for residents of the City and County.
Sarah Beasley
Aontú
✅ Strongly in favour
Daniel Butler
Fine Gael
✅ Strongly in favour
Frankie Daly
Independent
❌ No Response Yet
Ruairi Fahy
People Before Profit
✅ Strongly in favour
The cycling network must be completed and work needs to be done to improve the safety of junctions as well as driver awareness. Better public consultation should be designed to get more people on board with active travel schemes as well as highlighting their benefits to everyone, not just cyclists. There needs to be more space given over to pedestrians and road layouts need to be improved including more use of the new pedestrian crossings to reduce speeding while also providing safe means for people to cross roads. Bus stops need to have shelters as many people who own a car default to using it instead of public transport on rainy days and they must include up to date route maps and timetables to ensure people who aren’t proficient with digital technologies aren’t excluded from comfortable use of the network. Bike parking and public bins should also be integrated with bus stops, especially in rural settings, to reduce the friction people have for using busses. Until there are expanded bus routes from all rural areas into the city there needs to be the creation of park and ride services linked into both bus and train routes to reduce carbon emissions and air pollution from inefficient car travel across the city.
While there are positive changes within the bus connects plan by finalising the routes before the census data was available some people who need busses most have been left further away from a bus stop or on routes that are much less frequent. There are also many areas where the walk to a bus stop is 20 minutes or more for people with reduced mobility which could lead to further social isolation without other interventions. Beyond these changes we also want to fight with unions for a reduced work week to hopefully reduce the constant drive to rush around that is leading to increased aggression by car users and an increased dependence on cars as people feel they are unable to carry out all their tasks and attend everywhere they need to be without the use of car.
Laura Keyes
Rabharta
✅ Strongly in favour
Active and Sustainable Transport are key in promoting climate action, health and outward facing communities. Limerick has become somewhat disjointed due to the lack of transport options and the over reliance on cars. We have higher levels of chronic disease and disabilities than the national average. Active and sustainable travel is a vital cog in the system change that we need to address these issues. Many of us would prefer to take active or public transport but are locked into car usage because of the way Limerick has been planned.
The LSMATS was developed with extensive public consultation and underpinned by evidence, as such I actively support it. There are however areas that I would like to revisit such as the bus connects plan focusing very much on arterial routes and placing bus stops out of walking distance for many and the term accessibility used 47 times in the LSMATS but rarely used to mean accessibility for people with additional needs. More universal design thinking needs to be included. I am very much in favour of a cycling network. A common complaint on the doors is that many of the cycle lanes stop abruptly making them unsuable, a cycling network would alleviate this. I am also in favour of exploring the possibility of and applying for EU funding for an Utrecht style multi story bicycle park near Colbert station.
Brian Leddin
Green Party
✅ Strongly in favour
Active and sustainable transport is one of the keys to creating a healthy and happy society. These are a very high priority for me, as they have been since I’ve been involved in politics and before then too.
John Moran
Independent
✅ Strongly in favour
My views on LSMATS are already well known as is the advocacy long before others for rail as a framework for Limerick (which was omitted in the first draft LSMATs) but had already been accepted in the RSES as a result inter alia of submissions I made on the point. Clearly, the fact that I pushed the largest TOD project in Limerick at Colbert, wrote about the advantages of trains, economic advantages of freedom from car ownership and indeed that we bought a house without a car parking space in the back yard, should show I am not just making this up for an election! I was of course also on the National Demand Management Strategy expert groups earlier this year.
Caitríona Ní Chatháin
Socialist Party
✅ Strongly in favour
Helen O’Donnell
Independent
✅ Strongly in favour
Elisa O’Donovan
Social Democrats
❌ No Response Yet
Maurice Quinlivan
Sinn Féin
✅ Strongly in favour
Dee Ryan
Fianna Fáil
✅ Strongly in favour
Active travel and safe travel is a foundational principle of my People and Communities Strategy. I am particularly focused on pedestrians and the disabled and the vulnerable. The safe integration of cyclists and scooter users on our roads is a particular concern and I plan to convene a sprint team to address this early in my Mayoral term.
Conor Sheehan
Labour
✅ Strongly in favour
Gerben Uunk
Party for Animal Welfare
❌ No Response Yet
Priority 6 Commitment – I will ensure Limerick becomes a Child Friendly City and County where the voices, needs, priorities and rights of children are at the centre of policy making.
Sarah Beasley
Aontú
✅ Strongly in favour
Daniel Butler
Fine Gael
✅ Strongly in favour
Frankie Daly
Independent
❌ No Response Yet
Ruairi Fahy
People Before Profit
✅ Strongly in favour
Limerick city is extremely lacking when it comes to facilities for teenagers to just safely exist without spending money to just develop and grow. While there are better services for younger children the density and accessibility of parks in the city and county are well below other places. Through great work by volunteers there are avenues to socialise and get healthy through a range of sports but there are very limited spaces outside of that where children and young people can meet, spend time and try to grow and develop in an unstructured setting. By reducing car use, improved public and active transport, providing communities with a say over how money is spent on public amenities and by rebuilding communities we can hopefully give children more autonomy instead of having access to activities based purely on the ability of parents to pay for them. We also need to create more sheltered public spaces where children and teenagers can meet and spend time together without needing to spend money.
Laura Keyes
Rabharta
✅ Strongly in favour
As a mother of young children, I see on a daily basis the difficulties they face and the lost opportunities for physical activity. Children and their parents/guardians are faced with dangerous roads, lack of footpaths, cycle lanes that abruptly end (i.e. not a cycle network), insufficient green spaces, few options for indoor physical activities, air pollution, amongst a plethora of other things. Limerick was recently voted the worst place to live in Ireland in terms of work life balance. This has a direct impact on the health, wellbeing and futures of our children. If elected mayor one of the things I want to do is vastly improve the council’s public consultation process. I will do this by removing the registration barrier for input on “mypoint” and introducing townhall style engagement and other methods of engagement, early in the design process.
Consultation is a one-way type of engagement and usually happens as an end of process action. We know it doesn’t work, I commit to putting the voices of all people, youths included, as the centre of decision making. I will also use part of the €40M funds to introduce a “youth talks” programme. This is a programme that was very successful in Scotland. It brought youths together to co-design council initiatives in their community. Some of the initiatives the young people designed included a youth run café and a darts hall. The key however is that those initiatives were designed by the young people and were specific to their needs and their communities. It moved away from the one size fits all approach so often taken in Ireland. The programme had the added benefit of reducing teen related anti-social behaviour. I have recently engaged 6th class children in Limerick and asked them for submissions on my mayoral programme. When I talk about co-creating, I mean with all the people in Limerick and this very much includes the youth voice. I never cease to be amazed by ideas that come from children. They can see the world in a much more simplistic way and as such can land on solutions more easily than adults. I want to bring a human rights based approach to planning and strategy development in Limerick, this includes promoting the rights of the child.
Brian Leddin
Green Party
✅ Strongly in favour
I agree with the objective and I would be keen to establish an expert group to look at how we can apply it to how we plan, design and manage the city and county.
John Moran
Independent
✅ Strongly in favour
When I first gave my first adress to the Limerick Chamber, using the lettors of L-I-M-E-R-I-C-K, I spoke of the need to listen to Kids in designing for Limerick. It had become obvious to me running a restaurant that if you make it work for kids it works for adults., This theme was echoed by Brent Toderian when I brought him on board for the Colbert consultation and I have reused that slide numerous times over – including at my policy launch event for a More Libeable Limerick. I might mention that one of the prods from our policy actions to the retailers of Limerick is to deal with people (including kids) with autisim (which I did at the Hunt Garden) but also the thrust of all of our More Liveable Limerick strategy is aligned to this objective – (eg waterside public park with qualitt sports activity spots for all ages) with the possible exception that I’d go further and encourage a more pet friendly city as these are important assets for kids growing up as they are for adults and rental accomodation and other aspects of urban life needs to adjust to that in Ireland.
Caitríona Ní Chatháin
Socialist Party
✅ Strongly in favour
Children have autonomy which we must respect, and as a teacher I believe strongly in building a child-centred world. This is a vision that would benefit all of us, not least women and children. As a trade unionist I am currently fighting for reduced class sizes and more access to additional needs resources, as well as tackling the teacher recruitment and retention crisis which has a negative impact on young people. Outside of school, well resourced universal public childcare would enrich the relationships between parents and children. Having a serious approach to funding our public healthcare system is key to tackiling the absurd and harmful waiting lists for diagnoses of needs for young people.Children have autonomy which we must respect, and as a teacher I believe strongly in building a child-centred world. This is a vision that would benefit all of us, not least women and children. As a trade unionist I am currently fighting for reduced class sizes and more access to additional needs resources, as well as tackling the teacher recruitment and retention crisis which has a negative impact on young people. Outside of school, well resourced universal public childcare would enrich the relationships between parents and children. Having a serious approach to funding our public healthcare system is key to tackiling the absurd and harmful waiting lists for diagnoses of needs for young people.
Helen O’Donnell
Independent
✅ Strongly in favour
Elisa O’Donovan
Social Democrats
❌ No Response Yet
Maurice Quinlivan
Sinn Féin
✅ Strongly in favour
Dee Ryan
Fianna Fáil
✅ Strongly in favour
I am a parent and I raise my children in a very active style and like all parents I am concerned about the safety and wellbeing of our children. My People and Communities programme will aim to address the fact that that many of our children in Limerick face incredible challenges. We must strive to make the streets and spaces of our city, our towns and our villages into safe and enabling spaces for all our children.
Conor Sheehan
Labour
✅ Strongly in favour
Gerben Uunk
Party for Animal Welfare
❌ No Response Yet
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