I want to be the new mayor of Limerick
Ex-mandarin Moran says he rejected offers to join parties
THE former secretary general of the Department of Finance, John Moran, has said he rejected numerous advances to join other political parties before deciding to run as an Independent to be the first directly elected Mayor of Limerick.
Mr Moran, who yesterday formally confirmed he would be running in the election in June, said: ‘I’ve been approached by some parties and I’ve thought hard about this and if I would enter the race and if so how.’
He said it was ‘important’ that the mayor is someone who does not have ‘party allegiances’.
Asked why this was important, he said: ‘I think probably it would be the easiest to go under a political party flag.
‘For me the problem with that, many of the problems that we need to do to unlock the potential like in the midwest, they are not party political rows, they are about good administration of government, particularly local government.’
He added: ‘The mayor will have to get agreement on a billion-euro
‘Had too much centralisation’
budget. The worst thing for Limerick to happen would be to have a mayor from one party who is at war with other political parties who control the council chamber and they can’t agree on a budget.’
He continued: ‘We know in Ireland we have had too much centralisation, and political parties in Ireland are national and the policies they design are for the country. If you sign up for a political party you sign up for all their policies, good, bad or indifferent.’
‘So you don’t want a problem where the Mayor of Limerick goes up looking for [funding for] housing, and, because they are of a particular political party persuasion, that the Minister for Housing or Finance Minister will say, “We are not going to make him look good on the run-up to a general election”.’
Mr Moran is the second candidate to formally announce his intentions for the mayoralty.
Green Party TD Brian Leddin is also standing. It is understood that Dee Ryan, chief executive of Limerick Chamber, has put her name forward to run for Fianna Fáil, while Helen O’Donnell – aunt of Kieran O’Donnell, Fine Gael TD for Limerick City – is understood to be keen to stand for the asme party as her nephew.
Asked if he was relying on his experience of how the Government worked given his role as former secretary general, Mr Moran said: ‘The first thing is that that candidate does not need to be aligned to a political party and that they will be managing a billion-euro budget and other projects that spend hundreds of millions... and to have the experience of and in dealing with big numbers and budgets. The thing you learn in the Department of Finance is how do you create different options but still make the numbers match up.’
He also said that given that he had run large organisations, he had significant experience of HR and of managing some ‘very serious infrastructure’.
He added: ‘You want someone who has the experience in running large organisations.’
Mr Moran also defended his role in lobbying for Uber.
The former secretary general was embroiled in a scandal after it was revealed that he had told the taxi service that he would be able to drop off a note to former finance minister Michael Noonan.
Mr Moran said: ‘The bottom line for me is that as a mayor you have to be able to lobby both within organisation and companies and convince them to come to Limerick. At least here in Limerick a lot of people are happy I went to bat for Limerick to get 300 to 400 jobs for Limerick.’
Mr Moran said the rest of the story was a sideshow.
He said he believed he followed the rules at the time, adding he was the first secretary general to publish every meeting and ‘every hour’ he worked. ‘Don’t be thinking I don’t believe in transparency,’ he added.
Mr Moran said that it was important to be able to ‘convince some company like Uber’ to bring jobs to Limerick.
He also said he successfully recovered from bowel cancer recently and that he would encourage others to get checked out.