Cork should get priority on Apple money for spending on city's light rail, says Lord Mayor

Cork's Lord Mayor, Dan Boyle, has responded to suggestions from Limerick Mayor that the mid west city should get €2billion of the €14 billion from the Apple Windfall and said that Cork should get priority in terms of developing urban counterpoints to Dublin.

As he commented on the appeal for a portion of the Apple funding to Taoiseach Simon Harris made by John Moran, who was directly elected as Limerick’s Mayor last June, Mr Boyle said that the question of directly electing a mayor for Cork should be revisited as Limerick’s mayor was empowered by legislation to make direct approaches to Government ministers.

The legislation doesn’t permit the Lord Mayor of Cork to make similar direct approaches to Government ministers.

Mr Boyle believes that the Apple funding should be spent primarily on public transport infrastructure. 

“The principle that it can be used for infrastructure is important, it should be public transport infrastructure and if it can speed up Cork light rail, I think that it’s something that we in Cork would be arguing more strongly for,” he said.

“There is competition between Cork and Limerick, there’s no doubt about it, but if the national policy of expanding urban centres as a counterpoint to Dublin has any meaning at all, Cork has to have a priority and that’s what I’d be arguing for as Lord Mayor of Cork.” 

Mr Boyle said he was a long time supporter of the position of Mayor being directly elected in Cork as it is in Limerick and described the power of Limerick’s first citizen to make direct appeals to Government ministers as ‘a welcome power to have’.

“It’s certainly a power I, as Lord Mayor, would like to have,” he said.

“To the question, should there be an elected mayor, yes, it’s something I’ve long campaigned for and I’d like to see happening but it can only happen after another plebiscite in the city and legislation would have to pass in Dáil Éireann and I don’t see that happening in a hurry.” 

In a letter sent in September to An Taoiseach, Simon Harris, the Limerick Mayor said that the €14billion from the Apple windfall should be split with €2billion each going to Limerick and Waterford, €1billion to Galway and €3.5billion to Cork. He argued in the letter that this would help ‘rebalance the country’s economy’ which was, he further contended, ‘dangerously concentrated in the east’.

He said that Limerick and other regional cities were supposed to be growing at twice the rate of Dublin but there was a huge disparity in investment.