The Limerick City Manager, the Chair of Limerick City council, and all of the Limerick City Councilors have to be held accountable for this amateurish situation. I sincerely hope that the councilors are presenting emergency motions and are meeting around the clock to resolve this issue. They are the ones who are ultimately responsible.
Limerick shouldn’t be singled out for ridicule as a result of the failures of those whose job it is to make sure things are done correctly, above board and within best practice and principal. All the guidelines are there. All the protocols are there and all the corporate governance legislation and law is there. It would seem they departed or had indeed wreckless disregard for these procedures in their appointment of certain individuals without going through the proper recruitment procedures.
It is simply mind-boggling that a person with no experience in the Arts was given a plum job by the Limerick City Manager and endorsed by the Chairman of the City of Culture committee. Their contempt is shameless. Who do these people think they are? They ask for our trust, we give it to them and they behave appallingly and cause enormous damage to the great people of Limerick and their fantastic city. These kinds of people are not unique to Limerick. The same controversies can be found in the more recent Derry/LondonDerry City of Culture and indeed more closer to home our own scandalous and corrupted Temple Bar Cultural Trust. A company, that is now to be wound down as a result of its bad practices. The loss is to the City of Dublin and to the Temple Bar area itself and to all artists everywhere. After all, this was meant to be the outstanding ‘Cultural Quarter’ and it would appear it was just one big gravy train. Certain grubby, greedy arts managers and administrators hell bent on furthering their own egomaniacal careers and stuffing their own pockets at the expense of the public and indeed the many thousands of struggling artists.
We need to expose the culture of these wrongs and confront these kinds of practices. The courageous individuals who took the decision to resign as a way of challenging these similar kinds of practices has to be commended. Maybe now we are going places. We’re confronting our politicians, we’re confronting the clergy, we’re confronting the Banks, now we’re confronting ‘Cultural Gangland’ and its elites.
I wish Limerick city and its people the very best and I have no doubt that the courage of the Limerick artistic community will get to the bottom of this and bring a sense of transparency, clarity, fairness and accountability – plus consequences for those found wanting. Controversy is not a bad way to start a cultural event. You have our attention. So far so good!
Madge, Kathleen and Laura Daly, Limerick City
Mannix Flynn 
Rich comng from you. You had a personal vendetta against Temple Bar Cultural Trust and through your own machinations you’ve succeeded in having it shit. But it’s a Pyrrhic victory, you have no respect or currency with the creative community in Dublin or elsewhere any more, and to think you’re either equipped or qualified to pass judgement on the creative community in Limerick is, frankly, self indulgent and self important codswallop, the last gasps of a failed artist and now a failed administrator. You’re a spent force. Goodnight.
Hi Sulphur!
There were at least a half a dozen reports into Temple Bar Cultural Trust over the past four years. All of those reports flagged up serious concerns about financial management, administration and corporate governance. The City Manager as well as the new board and Chairman of TBCT took the decision to wind the company down as a result of these reports and audits. This was not about a personality issue, this was about a principal and for the record I was not the only person who had grave concerns about Temple Bar Cultural Trust and the former company Temple Bar Properties. Regarding the cultural community, I’m an Independent politician and artist and I don’t seek the comfort of cosy cartels or the ‘in’ crowd. The silence of certain sections of the so called ‘cultural community’ in Dublin was more about those who were involved in cultural administration, those individuals who get the lions share of the public purse while keeping the artist and society as outsiders. Classical example is your own narrow minded view and obviously personal vendetta against me. Nothing new there boss. You chose to use the email address ‘Dockrells’ to try and shame me about something that I had nothing whatsover got to do with 40 odd years ago.
Indeed you use your own username ‘smell of sulphur’ to try and attach more shame to me. What that does is really expose your good self. Its an awful pity because you had a good opportunity here to make a positive contribution but you chose instead to stay on the side of those whose days, like the bankers and church, and certain sections of Irish society, are numbered. I wish you well and enlightenment in the New Year. I will continue to do the job that I was elected to do.
In conclusion, it was the people who put me on the board of Temple Bar Cultural Trust. It was the Dublin City Councillors who supported me in that role and who re-elected me to that Board after I resigned and to date no artists or arts organisation has come out and condemned me for what took place at Temple Bar Cultural Trust. You obviously have an agenda here. The very fact that you hide your identity speaks volumes. Its akin to the old phrase ‘Silence is Violence’ and indeed could be associated with cyber bullying. Anyway, sure we’ll throw it out there to the public domain for debate and see what happens. Maybe you’d like to reveal yourself as a gift to us all?
Give a name Smell…..hiding behind what?
Thanks for that – at a time many of us as Limerick artists feel left in the dark – it’s great to get some national solidarity. Join us down here any time Mannix.
Suggest you all organise a real time Limerick cultural resurrection of the workers’ soviet experiment and give this dying republic of gombeenery a kick in its lard-padded hole.
Work around the blueshitewash PR-op agenda.
The Second Limerick Soviet has a good ring to it.
Agree that it is up to the real artists of Limerick to sidestep the shitkicking and finger pointing and make a real city of culture not just a suit agro-culture!!!!
Go Soviet.
Well said.