Limerick’s directly elected Mayor John Moran has launched a scathing attack on a number of councillors, accusing them of a deliberate strategy to ensure his term as mayor is not successful.
Limerick’s electorate became the first in the country to vote for a mayor in 2024 with the Independent candidate topping the poll.
His tenure as mayor has been divisive, however, with council meetings often combative and fractious.
Tensions reached boiling point last week after a seven-hour meeting about the council’s corporate plan, during which Mr Moran took ill.
The mayor left County Hall in Dooradoyle five hours into the meeting, saying he felt unwell.
Councillors passed the plan in his absence despite pleas from some members to let the mayor view the document first.
On Monday, he issued a statement on his own website, sharing details of what happened at the meeting.
He accused a “small negotiating group” from Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil of directing “their colleagues to outvote the others using their majority and preferring to take advantage of my ill-health”.
“They used their voting control to pass a document of which they knew I did not approve – a disapproval it seems no-one (not even the director general) explained to other councillors not involved in the negotiating team.”
He described it as “a political manoeuvre to make sure the very amendments I wanted would not be pressed if there was a debate at a later date”.
“What should have been a structured exchange in the chamber became a compressed and pressured process in which the mayor was effectively isolated from the chamber where key discussions should have been taking place,” he said.
“That is not healthy democratic practice,” he added.
‘Small minority’ of councillors
The mayor said it is a “small minority” of councillors who have “consistently opposed every significant initiative I have brought forward”.
He cited criticism of his flagship scheme to use modular homes to help address the housing crisis in Limerick.
“A strategic land purchase in Patrickswell for housing and other amenities – widely applauded across the country and supported by many within the chamber – had been relentlessly criticised and lobbied against,” Mr Moran wrote.
He said there have been “repeated procedural obstacles placed in the way of my routine work”.
“These are not the actions of people seeking collaboration. They are the tactics of those determined to resist change and ensure my term as mayor cannot be successful.”
Mr Moran also claimed that people outside Limerick have described the local authority as “unusually combative”.
John Moran said the office of mayor is a ‘radical change from the way things worked in the past’
“We should reflect on that,” he said.
The Limerick Fine Gael Group said in a statement that “Recent debate around the Corporate Plan reflects the reality of a shared democratic system within Limerick City and County Council. The Mayor and councillors alike hold mandates from the people of Limerick, and robust discussions is part of responsible governance.
“While we may not always agree on process or priorities, our collective focus must remain on delivering practical results for our communities. We remain committed to constructive engagement with Mayor John Moran and all colleagues to ensure the new system works effectively for everyone.”
A senior member of Fianna Fáil in Limerick said the party is considering the mayor’s statement and will respond to it in due course.
Limerick City and County Council is not commenting on the mayor’s statement.
‘Some truths needed to come out,’ says Moran
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Mr Moran said when asked about his statement that “just basically some truths that needed to come out”.
He said he agrees with Minister and local Fine Gael TD Patrick O’Donovan that “there is a need for a very quick review of the legislation” that provides for having directly elected mayors.
Speaking later on RTÉ’s News at One, Mr Moran said he had been asking for “clarity from the department” about the legislation and it “hasn’t been forthcoming because they don’t think it’s their role”.
“But essentially on this journey, I kind of took the approach that if I worked harder and harder then more things would get done and we’d get through the obstacles that seems to be in the way of getting what the people want, which is delivery.
“And it’s not happening,” he added.
Mr Moran said “I think on Tuesday, in reality, it got to a point of where the debate needed to be out in the public,” and adeed that in their subsequent statement, councillors themselves appear to agree with him.
He said things had reached a stage where it had become “inappropriate”.
Mr Moran said business was being conducted where “we go to a council meeting, there’s an immediate deferral of the item, people go in to closed rooms, they come out with their, you know, demands, they want to have those negotiated out of the council chamber”.
“And that’s kind of happened at the budget, it’s happened again.
“I don’t think it’s the way forward,” he said.
He said a “couple of people” have advised him to “walk away” from the role but that he is too “passionate” about the job and the reforms he wants for Limerick to do that.
Mr Moran said that both the councillors and he were elected by the people and that differences of opinion should be debated in the council chamber.
He said the role for any mediator in the row would depend on “what approach the councillors want to take.”
He added that everyone was still “working together” and said, “this is not the siege of Limerick or something like that.”
Mr Moran said the office of mayor is a “radical change from the way things worked in the past”, and people voted for it “because they didn’t, I don’t think, believe that things were working as well as they should be in Limerick”.
“And they did that in 2019, and in 2024 they could have chosen a mayor from the parties that had ruled the council or were likely to.
“They didn’t, they chose to have an independent mayor,” he said
Mr Moran said he believes voters expected “there would be a challenge coming both directions, that’s the nature of the binary system that we now have in Limerick”.
Council not provided ‘tool kit’ needed for directly elected mayor – Moran
Mr Moran said that a lesson from the last 18 months he has been mayor is that the Government did not accept the recommendations from an Oireachtas committee about the way the office should be set up.
“We are in exactly the spectre that was raised as some of the disadvantages [sic] with the way the legislation was being drafted to not allow the mayor deliver in terms of what they wanted to do.”
Mr Moran said “lots of councillors across all parties” have worked “phenomenally well” with him to deliver and “almost everybody” across the Council is “trying to do their best.”
“But it’s an organisation that is not…resourced.
“It is not actually given the tool kit that it needs by government to be able to deliver what the people voted for in the mayoral election.”