Regeneration project - Weakest pay for excesses of the rich

SO, it seems the greatly trumpeted and entirely justified Limerick Regeneration Project is to go the way of decentralisation and the ambitious but sidelined national spatial strategy from 2002.

Spatial strategy was described as “a coherent national planning framework for the next 20 years”. That would “achieve a better balance of social, economic and physical development across Ireland, supported by more effective planning”. So much for that.

Decentralisation was next. It was one of Charlie McCreevy’s more eccentric – and impossibly expensive – fantasies. His one-man-and-his-ego folly did not survive even the timorous scrutiny a mother might use to quiz a spoilt child. It was one of those plans that sounded great and promised wonderful things until you tried to make it work. It was as if the architect used metric measurements but everyone else was stuck on imperial inches and yards. It just did not add up.