'You’ve got to give back to the community': Meet two Cork locals behind Shandon's regeneration

Cork City’s Shandon area is at the heart of a bold urban regeneration strategy — will funding finally turn vision into reality, asks Eoin English

Tadhg McCarthy, left and James Nolan, right, of the Shandon Area Renewal Association, on Widderlings Lane which leads to Pope's Quay, one of many historic laneways in the area.

They know Cork’s historic Shandon area better than most, and have seen plans and strategies for its future come and go over the years with little impact. But both agree that this could be the one.

“It’s big on aspiration. There is fierce potential in it, in the ambition of it. Now it’s all about funding and delivery,” says Tadgh McCarthy, a member of the Shandon Area Renewal Association (SARA), who has lived all his life in the area.