Tackling the housing crisis: Can Limerick’s success help solve an All-Ireland problem?
Catriona Cahill
LIMERICK’S economic resurgence in recent years has been nothing short of inspiring. The city that was once plagued by bad press and a “last out, turn off the lights” mentality around the time of the Dell layoffs in 2009 has undergone an ‘ugly duckling’ transformation and has now positioned itself as an attractive European destination in which to live, work and invest.
How did all this come about? Collaborative leadership — basically management speak for being better than the sum of one’s parts — is at the root of this startling metamorphosis.
The Limerick 2030 development plan sparked the regeneration of the city by bringing together expertise from the local council, educational institutions and the business community.
The creation of the Limerick Twenty Thirty DAC (Designated Activity Company) was also crucial. This company, wholly owned by Limerick City and County Council (LCCC), has achieved notable successes like the Troy Studios development and has also secured European Investment Bank funding of €85m for the city centre Opera development.
Despite all these advances, Limerick is no different from other urban centres in that it still faces challenges in relation to housing supply.
While I remain unconvinced of the ambitious 50pc increase in population projected by the National Planning Framework, it’s something of a no-brainer that building in Limerick (along with Dublin, Cork, Galway and Waterford) will need to be “ramped up” as per the Taoiseach’s suggestion on the Late Late before Christmas.
Just like all other Irish cities, Limerick has a shortage of suitable urban accommodation. This shortage is unlikely to be addressed by property developers anytime soon given their claims of poor margins due to high construction costs.
In such a climate other cities could do worse than study Limerick’s recent decision to assess how an upgrade of existing infrastructure might improve supply. In 2018, the residential and commercial vacancy rate in Limerick City Centre was 8pc and 46pc respectively. The issue with vacant units becomes even more apparent when broken down by floor level.
As Europe’s most westerly Georgian city, many buildings in Limerick’s historic quarter have proven notoriously difficult and expensive to renovate.
Other Irish cities face similar issues. The national policy response to this was the ‘Living Cities Initiative’, introduced in 2013 to provide tax incentives for individuals to refurbish buildings in our city centres. One has to ask why only 113 individuals nationwide (as of June 2018) had seen fit to avail of this scheme.
The scheme will run until 2020 so, while it may still be early days to say that the die is cast in terms of overall success, it is clear that the Government must provide greater incentives if it wishes to successfully address the factors that discourage this type of development (ie costs, planning restrictions and time).
To LCCC’s credit, it has tried to prime innovation by securing funding of €2.7m under the Urban Regeneration Development Fund to renovate housing in the Georgian part of the city.
This will provide a template for the refurbishment of Georgian buildings by investigating whether laneway access points that allow for individual development of a building’s 2nd, 3rd and 4th floors represent a viable solution.
If successful, the transition of units from commercial to residential will be streamlined thus reducing costs, time, and ultimately increasing occupancy.
Limerick, in terms of its scale and infrastructure, provides an optimal platform for this type of bottom-up policy approach. In addition, LCCC currently has the most comprehensive data on city centre vacancy of any local authority.
Vacant unit development is only one of several housing challenges that are in the process of being addressed in a dynamic fashion at local level.
It is important to emphasise however that there is no one silver bullet solution to the challenge of revitalising our urban centres.
In order for cities to thrive, a collaborative and transparent approach to policy development must become the norm.