With Christmas shoppers milling around the city, the CEO of Limerick Chamber, Maria Kelly, took a look back at 2007 and revealed some of her hopes for the New Year and beyond. 

“When I started in 2005, there was a huge amount of pessimism and a lot of development on the outskirts of the city. There was concern in the business community that investment was being sucked out but this has almost completely turned around. The Riverpoint Building set a new standard for developments and the pedestrianisation has had a major impact. Now the city has a focal point and it’s a wonderful job.”

She added that 2007 highlights include Thomas Street’s new found status as the “café quarter”, the total redevelopment of Bedford Row and the arrival of several top class hotel chains including the Hilton and the Marriott in the city.

“Three years ago, there were more shops shutting down than opening. Now we have the Opera Centre starting in January and they’re looking for a major international brand to anchor that. There’s more forward thinking with the proposed development of Arthur’s Quay. The social issues here are now being addressed with the setting up of the regeneration agencies so Limerick is really changing,” she said.

Ms Kelly admitted that Limerick’s ‘brand image’ has been detrimental to business but predicted that this perception would fade in a few years.

“It would be wrong to ignore all that has happened and it is terrible that it took a huge tragedy with Millie and Gavin Murray for the Government to take notice. I think the John Fitzgerald report is excellent and will have a massive impact. But you can’t lay all the blame on social problems. This is partly where the idea for an iconic project and the ‘Revitalisation of Urban Limerick’ report came from.”

The report has attracted criticism from local councillors but Ms Kelly said that the “unique experiment” was undertaken with the city’s future in mind.

“The idea was to bring fairly significant people together to come up with a project to draw an extra one million people into the city. It’s unfortunate that people felt excluded but it was the business community saying what they’d like,” she emphasised.