Re: Re: 2006 Highlights

The Lord Mayor of Cork, Cllr. Michael Ahern’s highlights of 2006 as published by the Evening Echo 22nd December.

1. “The Lord Mayor’s Christmas concert was a great event and raised around 30,000 euro”
2. “Launching books on the burning of Cork in 1920”
3. “Official visits to city schools”
4. “Meeting Bob Geldof was great. He gets things done- look at what he has achieved. He’s moving mountains”

And his wish list for 2007;
1. “The docklands seem to be going fairly well, and I look forward to more progress in 2007.
Last year, I would have said it would take 15 years to put in place, but now I’d say it will be much shorter than that.”
2. “The extension of the city boundary was another on the table, and it has progressed. It won’t finish in my time, to be honest. But we might get a response from Cork County Council in my time.
“I suppose it’ll be negative overall, but it might be positive.
‘There’s a few councilors on the county side beginning to see something needs to
be done
“It would be better if we could do it with agreement, and that’s not impossible.
But it’ll be after the General Election I’d say.”
3. “I wanted, and apparently will be getting, a local area plan for the city centre for the island between the two rivers.
“Planning shouldn’t just be in response to developers. We should be leading the way. There needs to be something to pull it all together”.
“You can’t just .put a high building here and a low building there and let the
builders have it whatever they want. We should be leading, instead of
responding and reacting.”