Cork County Council's new chief, Moira Murrell, ready to take on challenges facing the local authority 

Moira Murrell is newly appointed as the chief executive officer of Cork County Council, the largest local authority in the country outside of Dublin.

She is a native of Killarney and, until recently, the CEO of Kerry County Council.

She held the Kerry post for 10 years having previously served in Cork County Council’s Northern Division and, before that, as a Director in the Western Division. She also served as a director of roads and water (long before that function came under the exclusive ambit of Irish Water (Uisce Éireann).

Now she’s back following the recruitment process caused by the decision of former County Cork CEO, Tim Lucey, to take up a role heading Greyhound Racing Ireland last year.

Ms Murrell, a Masters graduate in local government management from the Institute of Public Administration, is beginning her new role at Cork County Council as a new term begins for elected members.

At the council’s first meeting of this five year term, also Ms Murrell’s first meeting, councillors welcomed her of course but, also, a challenge was laid down. An oft quoted statistic, Cork’s network of roads, the most extensive in the country at more than 12,000km, gets approximately €6,000 per Km per year, while Kerry roads get €10,000 per Km, a disparity which raises as much or more ire among councillors as the differential between the record in footballing All-Irelands between the two counties.

Considerable investment 

The CEO sees the challenge but she also sees what she terms the considerable investment by central Government into the roads in Cork, this year it was €174m.

“Road maintenance and the local roads, they are in poor condition, there’s no point in saying otherwise,” Ms Murrell said.

“Ourselves in the Executive identify the condition of the roads through various surveys, having that factual information, we have to look at the scale of the roads in Cork. For example, West Cork has the same as the fifth county, that’s the scale of the challenge.”

Ms Murrell also pointed to the discretionary budget of the Council and said it was significant that €9.5m had been assigned to local roads.

She referred to Storm Babet, last October’s extreme weather event which caused extensive flooding throughout East Cork in particular and caused severe damage to roads, amounting to a total bill of more than €55m for local and regional roads.

“Between Cork County Council and the department, €20m has been allocated to the Council and, I know it’s a very extreme set of circumstances, I think the more cases we can make specifically, that will be the approach,” Ms Murrell said.

When the overall bill of €52m was put to Ms Murrell, she said some of that was to provide for ‘vulnerabilities that may come as we try to identify the vulnerabilities’.

“Specifically into the roads, they’ve got €20m for one year with the commitment for further allocations, it’s not insignificant either to be fair,” Ms Murrell said.

Just before the election the former Green Party leader, and still the transport minister holding the purse strings for roads’ budgets, Eamon Ryan told The Echo that the ‘money was there’ for the repairs.

“Without doubt we need further investment in our roads, you look at the quality of the roads and length of the roads, it would be very important in my point of view to make the best case that we can possibly make for funding,” Ms Murrell said.

Challenges 

Making the best case possible is a refrain to which Ms Murrell returned frequently during the interview as raising extra funds to deal with the many challenges facing the Council and local government in general is of paramount importance. What are the other challenges being faced by the Council?

“The first thing is housing, the delivery of social and affordable housing is a huge, huge priority and, in that, there’s the zoning, there’s our land-bank, the infrastructure that’s needed, the waste water, road infrastructure,” Ms Murrell said. “When you think about it, we have a huge amount of targets to deliver in housing, we need to do that, and it’s very important we do that not in an isolated way but in an integrated way. We have a lot of community planning work with that as well and that’s right across the county and that’s very much a focus for the council.”

The ideas of bringing people with her to make the best possible case are frequently referred to during the interview which gives an insight into the sheer scale, as well as the depth and the breadth of the work involved in leading Cork County Council. There are so many challenges but there’s also a more positive side.

“The national planning framework — Cork is the counterbalance to Dublin and I think that gives us a huge opportunity and working with the city in relation to that. For me that’s very much a focus,” Ms Murrell said.

“As is economic development, we have FDI [foreign direct investment], we also have a huge sector around small and medium enterprise. So supporting that through enterprise development, there’s a huge opportunity in tourism right across the county. As the local authority, we have a leadership role in that, bringing different bodies and agencies together.

“There’s also a huge emphasis on climate as a priority. There’s an opportunity with relation to wind and Cork Harbour but, also, there are the consequences of climate change and we will have seen Storm Babet and the aftermath of that. We’re also a coastal county with 1200km of coast, so working with that is going to be a huge opportunity and challenge.”

She pointed to the significant role played by local authorities during the pandemic in, as she put it, “leading out in community fora” or in the integration role the authority now has in getting to grips with the challenges played by new populations.

“There’s great staff here and the council is very progressive and I’ve always said that, even when I left Cork, the same sense is still there now.”