Council Affairs: PR campaign a SMART move?

They best have the Speedo-clad lifeguards on standby over the summer months in Merchant’s Quay, just in case they all start running in slo-mo.

MAYOR Moran’s Fine Gael pals out in County Limerick appear to have recently joined team Baywatch — most of them anyway — but they might be swept away by the tide if they aren’t careful.

This past week’s faux pas of the week, drum roll please, is from our very own Hoffmeister’s plans to spend an estimated €100,000 of public monies on a PR, digital marketing, and social media campaign for his SMART/modular housing programme.

Considering the public reaction to the modular plans so far, the Mayor does sometimes seem steadfast in demonstrating some good old fashioned tone deafness. Wasn’t it always going to make a huge splash with the Boro Park brigade and the city beachfront appreciation society?

Fine Gael councillor Dan McSweeney was not impressed. In fairness, he rarely is when it comes to our executive mayor. He found it extremely difficult to get his head round Moran’s proposed spending on communications and marketing rather than on “actually delivering more homes”.

“The reality is that far too many individuals and families are waiting for social, affordable, and cost rental homes. They need houses, not a lovely PR campaign.”

And in a show of true leadership, rather than counting to 10 and allowing McSweeney have his moment of ire, the Mayor opted to play tit for tat with the Fine Gael man.

“Let’s recall the record of the last Council, of which I was not a member, but in which Cllr McSweeney played a leading role. In 2023, Limerick delivered 788 homes against a requirement of 2,599. In 2022, delivery was 672,” Moran retorted.

“Cllr McSweeney’s grandstanding fails to engage with the scale of the problem or the need for a new approach,” he hit back.

And while some of the county blue-shirt contingent were calling for peace and harmony in a We Are The World moment, city councillor Sarah Kiely (FG) believed it was time to hold the Kumbaya campfire singalong and have the Mayor’s SMART housing PR campaign carried out in-house by the Council’s own marketing gurus.

“All councillors would have a list of projects that even a fraction of this money would benefit from. But, unfortunately, here we are, spending public money on consultants needlessly,” she opined.

Mayor and councillors alike could really learn a thing or two from enlightened sage Mitch Buchanon, who once said: “We walk together, we look out for one another, and we never let anyone drown.”