€300,000,000 earmarked for Limerick’s regeneration

David Young talks to residents in Limerick estates partly demolished after essential funds failed to materialise, and to the Rengeneration agency, which is due to disband in June

LIMERICK’S revival. Was it a chimera, a dream that could not be realised? Five years ago, the John Fitzgerald Report heralded a new direction for a city that had lost its way. Public and private investment was to be harnessed, and a new social vista shaped.

The now mythical figure of €3bn was pitched as the purse required to make this heavyweight contest happen; half from the State, the other from private pockets. But the €3bn was a projection, a potential financial scenario contingent on the health of the economy, and the success of State agencies to deliver attractive options to invest in the ‘regeneration areas’.