Skip to content

Limerick Independent

Home arrow News arrow Local News arrow Leddin is ‘shocked’ by decline in city estates
Leddin is ‘shocked’ by decline in city estates E-mail
Written by Rachael Finucane   
Wednesday, 22 October 2008
A CITY councillor has called for the city manager “to walk around council housing estates and witness the shocking appearance of certain estates and problems that residents are facing every day” in response to an impassioned plea by a city parish priest.

Labour representative, Joe Leddin, said that he is “extremely concerned regarding the continuing decline in the physical appearance of council housing estates”.

“While everyone is awaiting the publication of the regeneration plans for the city the practical problems that residents are confronted with every day are going unnoticed.

Residents who have lived in estates all their lives are now living beside derelict houses, rubbish dumps, and daily incidences of anti social behaviour,” he said.

“Basic services such as street cleaning, gully cleaning, have all but stopped and it is totally unacceptable for residents to have to live in these conditions while the promise of regeneration is in effect years away. The focus of attention seems to have permanently shifted towards publishing the Regeneration plans, instead of a similar effort being placed on stabilising these communities.”

Last week, Southill parish priest Fr Pat Hogan issued an open letter to Limerick City Council in which he said that it “despises its own citizens” and many people have been forced to leave certain areas.

“Limerick City Council manages the estate and is landlord to many who cause violence and harassment. We have watched the bowed elderly go in the dark of the night. Knowing they will never return. We thought it impossible to lose your home, the place of your family in modern Ireland….as city managers, where were they in protecting their own citizens?”

The lengthy letter also claimed that the council is a “hindrance” to regeneration.

Cllr Leddin said that “it is hard to disagree with Fr Hogan when he expressed his views in writing recently to City Hall regarding the problems local residents are experiencing”.

“I am now calling on the city manager to personally intervene and put in place a plan to deal with the day to day problems in these estates while we all wait for the implementation of the regeneration masterplans.”

In response to Father Hogan, the council said that it has “committed considerable resources to regeneration areas” and consistently deals with anti-social behaviour and funds estate management.

“The council is one of the most active in this area of operations in the country,” it said.

Comments (0) »		 feed
Show/Hide comment formtoggle


Write the displayed characters


busy
 
User Rating: / 0
PoorBest 
Share:
Digg
Delicious
NewsVine
Reddit
Technorati
YahooMyWeb
Spurl
< Prev   Next >
[ Back ]