The Limerick Leader - Wednesday, 9 January, 2008

President to launch regeneration plans

By David Hurley

PRESIDENT Mary McAleese will officially launch the vision documents for the regeneration of Moyross and Southill later this month during a day-long visit to Limerick.
President McAleese will travel to Limerick City and Askeaton on Monday January 21, when she will carry out a number of public engagements.

The vision documents for Moyross and Southill are the first steps towards the completion of master plans forADVERTISEMENTthe regeneration of the areas, in accordance with the John Fitzgerald report, which was published last year.

Chief Executive of the Limerick Regeneration Agencies, Brendan Kenny, welcomed confirmation that President McAleese has accepted the invite to launch the vision documents. "The President is coming down to launch both documents, the northside one in the morning and southside one in the afternoon. The documents, at that stage, will be printed and they will be available for everyone on the day so we are doing the finishing work on both documents as it stands because there are a lot of stakeholders and there are a lot of community residents to talk to about it but yes they will certainly be completed by that day." he said.

It is expected the vision documents will confirm the intention to demolish Many of the 1,100 houses in Moyross, and the 1,300 in Southill and Ballinacurra Weston to make way for the new towns which will include a mix of social and private housing.

Brendan Kenny says he hopes work on the construction of the new towns will get under way early in 2009.

Mr Kenny added that talks are continuing with the Garda authorities about the new arrangements which he feels will be needed to police the planned new towns.

Up to 100 extra gardaí have been promised for the two areas under the John Fitzgerald report and during a visit to Limerick last month Garda Commissioner Fachtna Murphy confirmed that 60 of the additional gardaí have already been deployed.