A night out in Limerick

I was enjoying a pint with an old friend in Blackrock recently when the conversation turned to Limerick. I invited my friend down for a weekend, which I have been doing for about 9 years - which he'd been promising to do yet actively not.

Not realising just how strong the anti-Limerick media campaign has been over the past decade+, I pushed the point about him actually having to come down. He turned to me, in all seriousness, and asked me just how dangerous was Limerick, and would we be able to go out and were there places to eat out in and then maybe walk to a pub. I was waiting for the smile at the end of the joke but it became clear that thiswas no joke and no smile was coming.

So for people who haven't yet been out in Limerick, here are some views of the Fab City from last Saturday. Apologies for the bad quality, I'm not a photographer and shouldn't be let near one. But someonewasn't watching when...

Limerick Bizcamp, LOCC and Recovery plans

A quick post from my other blog, about the Limerick OCC and to invite everyone to get inolved in that, Bizcamp Limerick and the greater recovery plans. Sorry for the plugs but it's a good effort and worth sharing.

The Limerick Open Coffee Club is meeting tomorrow at 11:00am in the Absolute Hotel. All welcome. I've been getting some great support and feedback and even a few offers for the Bizcamp and the Incubator, now christened "Greenhouse Limerick" by it's founder, Evert Bopp. The LOCC is also joining forces with Stephen Kinsella to develop and deliver Bizcamp Limerick.

This is subsert of the original post here (which is quite lengthy):

Suggested Recovery Plan

We need to throw out our tax incentives and start looking inward. We had €70 billion in 2008 in the National Pension Reserve Fund. If we hit 10% or 20% unemployment, whats the point of having a massive retirement fund. Dublin has lots and lots of VC. No wonder the government cannot decentralise. Why can't we put €8 billion into Cork, Limerick, Galway, Waterford, Ennis and Sligo, in proportionate amounts, into BUSINESSES, not into hotels, property, roads.

The government and civil servants will not and cannot solve innovation, invention and enterprise growth. Private sector businesses can and need this funding. This funding would create a safe haven for banks to invest in and for the agencies to deliver grants and other inestments. €1 billion invested in Limerick and Cork, say, could help create up to 2,000 companies with 5 employees. That would remove 10,000 people from the dole.

Incubation centres, according to Wikipedia [?], have an 87% success rate even after 5 years. If just 50% of these were successful, and just 1% became big enough to employ more than 500 people, it would be a roaring success. Plus they'd have a base in Ireland, not North America where they currently have to go.