well what about the developments popping up in the shannonside ?

Census 2006: Limerick remains a city! (52,560)

Despite a drop of -2.7% in population, the city remains above the 50,000 mark. Correct me if I’m wrong but this magical figure has been used as an argument for extending the boundary by the City Council, otherwise the “city” would be classed differently under European rules?

CSO population of Limerick City & Suburbs (2002) 86.998
CSO population of Limerick City & Suburbs (2006) ??.??? :confused:

Link: http://www.cso.ie/census/2006_preliminaryreport.htm

I tried to compare the Census of 2002 with 2006. It is very difficult to compile the real population of Limerick city with the data from 2006. I wanted to apply the same list of suburbs (Townlands) as used in 2002. The problem lies into breaking down these townland populations into city suburbs or pure county areas. I have found the following Townlands (highlighted blue) on the OSI Map below: (051) Ballycummin, (052) Ballysimon, (053) Ballyvarra, (068) Roxborough and (106) Ballyglass / Clare.

Limerick City 2006 (52,560)

Limerick Suburbs 2006
051 Ballycummin (16,279) City Suburb (?)
052 Ballysimon (11,260) City Suburb (?)
053 Ballyvarra (4,139) City Suburb (?)
065 Limerick North Rural (7,248) City Suburb (?)
066 Limerick South Rural (1,423) City Suburb (?)
068 Roxborough (1,608) City Suburb (?)
106 Ballyglass (Clare) (5,355) City Suburb (?)

Here a rant about place names (Townlands) used in maps but unknown in every day use!

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) makes an interesting note to their statistics regarding Townlands in Ordnance Survey maps (OSI). I have used The Limerick Street Map and two Discovery Series Maps (Limerick no. 65, Clare no. 58) to try to follow the CSO population trends in Limerick City. It’s practically impossible to equate let’s say the (CSO) Townland of Ballycummin with the (OSI) Townland of Ballycummin. Let alone that nobody in Limerick would know where :confused: Ballycummin is! Eventually I understood Ballycummin to mean Raheen / Dooradoyle area in general, but (OSI) denotes Ballycummin as an area west of the Raheen Industrial estate! Take Garryowen, Caherdavin, Thomondgate or Corbally as areas of Limerick city yet none appear in the census, nor are they marked as areas in the Limerick Street Map. Why?

Townlands
The enumeration of the census is organised, in the first instance, in townlands in rural areas and in streets in urban areas. The townland is the smallest territorial division and was formerly used for administrative purposes.
Population figures for townlands, of which there are about 51,000, were last published for the census of 1911. In many legally defined urban areas – Cities, and Towns – and in most other urban areas without legal boundaries it is no longer possible to compile townland population figures as building development has completely obliterated the physical features by which townland boundaries were originally defined on Ordnance Survey maps.

Electoral Divisions (EDs)
The smallest administrative area for which population statistics are published is the Electoral Division (formerly called District Electoral Division). In rural areas each Electoral Division consists of an aggregation of entire townlands. There are 3,440 Electoral Divisions in the State and their populations are given in Table 4 of this publication.

it seems incomprehensible to me that in a period of such economic and population growth shannon and cork have lost people , and dublin has gained so few.

Who would have thought the countryside was where to put the masses ? again ireland trailblazing. No doubt the rest of europe will join us in swapping cities for farms!! just bonkers.

@a boyle wrote:

it seems incomprehensible to me that in a period of such economic and population growth shannon and cork have lost people , and dublin has gained so few.

Who would have thought the countryside was where to put the masses ? again ireland trailblazing. No doubt the rest of europe will join us in swapping cities for farms!! just bonkers.

It’s a bit mad alright! :rolleyes:

I dont think anyone can deny that the likes of castletroy/monaleen, dooradoyle and raheen should be part of the city, i mean dooradoyle and raheen are only 2 miles from the city centre, the current situation is ludicrous, its not just about boosting the city’s population, its about managing the development of the greater city area in an efficient and coherent manner. The current situation is a shambles with limerick county council more interested in lining their pockets with rates from suburban developments than actually looking after the needs of the county its supposed to be serving, county hall is a prime example of LCC’s attitude, it should have been built in newcastlewest but for petty reasons it was built in dooradoyle just to put down a marker! Furthermore there is almost no co-operation whatsoever between the city and county councils, just look at the 2 huge retail complexes that have been approved for coonagh and groody in the last year, taking no account of the effect these developments would have on the city centre, again these would be huge rate earners for the council and i guess this was the deciding factor!

As for Marks & spencer i think its common knowledge that they will be one of the anchor tenants in the Opera centre, debenhams have apparently bought up roches stores, whether or not this means the end of the roches stores brand name i dont know but it would be a shame to see another Irish retailer dissapear!

@ShaneP wrote:

That means CologneMike, comparing like for like, that the population of the city and suburbs grew from 86,000 to 99,872. It doesn’t seem like there’s much else to go on.

Hello ShaneP. That’s the problem with the CSO Statistics for 2006, in that they can’t be compared yet like for like with 2002. As the townlands listed as Limerick Suburbs in the 2002 census were modified to give the real city population or unmodified as part of the county population. Therefore 99,872 would be too high as the townlands would yet have to be modified downwards to meet the city suburbs criteria. See my % breakdown of figures from 2002 census below.

See census 2002: http://www.cso.ie/census/documents/vol1_entire.pdf

2002 Limerick Suburbs (pt.)(b)

Ballycummin* (12,382) from (13,435) were classified as part of city suburbs. (92%)
Ballysimon* (8,380) from (9,675) were classified as part of city suburbs. (87%)
North Rural* (6,427) from (6,932) were classified as part of city suburbs. (93%)
South Rural* (959) from (980) were classified as part of city suburbs. (98%)
Roxborough* (544) from (1,678) were classified as part of city suburbs. (32%)
Ballyvarra* (432) from (3,740) were classified as part of city suburbs. (12%)
Ballyglass* (3,851) from (4,938) were classified as part of city suburbs. (78%)

@ShaneP wrote:

I think there was a report in one of the local papers some time ago that the area included in the planned boundary extension would give Limerick a population of about 110,000, but again have no idea where those figures came from.

110,000 could be a more realistic figure within the boundary extension, as Tom Mackey (Limerick City Manager) in a Limerick Leader interview early last year talked of 100,000 population in the greater Limerick area. We have seen since quite a surge of European immigration into Ireland since then.

@Justnotbothered wrote:

The problem with really deciding how big Limerick is the difficulty in ascertaining where is a suburb of the city, and which is an outlying town?

Hello Justnotbothered. We are in the year 2006, it amazes me how fixed the CSO and OSI are on using old historical townland names instead of the present day names to denote city suburbs! A lovely example is Shannon town in the 2006 Census! It does not appear under name of Shannon town but is denoted under the Ennis rural area as the townland of Clenagh with a population of 9,774!

@dave123 wrote:

Is Lisnagry and Annacotty and Castletroy mentioned? and Parteen? are they part of the total Limerick figure of 99,000

Hello dave123.
Lisnagry / Annacotty could be either in Ballyvarra or Ballysimon?
Castletroy should be in Ballysimon.
Parteen should be in Ballyglass.
I would say a CSO figure would be lower than a figure of 99,000. See reply to ShaneP overhead.

heh good one.

The new george is a pretty ugly beast, along with the neighbouring AIB definately the most out of proportion buildings on O Connell street, i suppose at least its somewhat of an improvement on what came before, i’ll give it 10 years before it has to be reclad! Its due to open in late september/early october, still no word though on who is to occupy the 2 floors of retail space fronting onto O Connell street!

Also i see a planning application has been submitted for the former county council on O Connell street, at the moment there is no further information on the proposal!

@justnotbothered wrote:

Major revamp planned at Colbert Station for Bus Eireann 🙂

LIMERICK’S Colbert Station is on for a major revamp-should the Limerick City Council Planning authority give the green light to a planning application lodged by Bus Eireann.
Permission is being sought for development at Colbert Station, Parnell Street, which is a protected structure.
The development will consist of demolition of existing single storey ancillary structures, removal of redundant trail tracks and public car parking to the north of the site, removal of public car parking to the west of the site, removal of bus stands, parking and staff parking to the south of the site and the provision of a new two storey bus station, comprising ticket offices, waiting areas, staff accommodation and public toilets, a direct step free link to the rail station concourse]

The limerick city council have yet to mark the exact location of the development site at Colbert station on their internet-site. So I took a calculated guess with the blue highlighted zones on the attached aerial image below. If I’m wrong do correct me!
Some thought’s on the redevelopment.

(1) Is the disused petrol station part of the redevelopment?

(2) Demolition of existing single storey ancillary structures. Is the warehouse part of the redevelopment?

There use to be a rear entrance to the C.B.S. & Presentation Schools, if it is still in use would there be safety issues needed to be addressed (i.e. Bus and School exits side by side and footpaths crossed by bus exit).

(3) Removal of public car parking to the west of the site.
Reconfigured and landscaped forecourt with revised vehicular access/egress, four no. bus stops/shelters to the west of the site

Will they remove the railings in front of the main building? What will happen to the taxi rank?

(4) Removal of redundant trail tracks and public car parking to the north of the site
Provision of a new two storey bus station, (comprising ticket offices, waiting areas, staff accommodation and public toilets)
Direct step free link to the rail station concourse;
Covered access to 16 no. bus stands,
Staff parking

(5) Removal of bus stands, parking and staff parking to the south of the site. 329 no public car parking spaces to the south of the site?, together with ancillary site works

Where will they fit 329 cars here?

(6) New bus entrance at Roxborough Road

Will private buses have access to the Station?
Have container / freight trains ceased serving Limerick?

Poor Public Transport Coordination with Limerick City Bus Services?:confused:

The development upgrade is duly needed. Amazingly enough, arriving by public transport to Limerick’s Colbert station either by train (commuter / inter-city) or by bus (expressway / local-rural-commuter) one cannot directly interchange with the city bus services simply because they don’t run city services through Colbert Station!

That means let’s say arriving from Ennis by commuter train and wish to continue on to the Regional Hospital in Raheen. You have two options a) take a taxi or b) walk some 5, 6 blocks to the city centre bus-stops. Take Galway city for example, their city bus services operate through the Eyre Square linking perfectly with the train and bus station.

This gap can be easily filled in Limerick by adding one bus-stop onto every city service route. Simply achieved after the buses arrive in the city centre, they then would all continue up William street, right turn into Roxborough road, right turn into rear of bus station, after bus stop then exiting right onto Parnell street, left turn Roches Street back into the city centre! Mallow Street could be used as an option as well. The idea of bus lanes for William Street, Roxborough Road, Parnell Street, Roches Street, Mallow Street might be well looking at.

@ShaneP wrote:

Just found this. Don’t know when it was put on their site, but it might mean that the project has some chance of getting going

http://www.murrayolaoire.com/civic/projects/limerick_cinema/index.html

LIMERICK ARTS CINEMA (Belltable Arts Centre)

It look’s like the Theatre Royal (Old Royal Cinema) to me, along side the VEC Athenaeum Building at the top of Cecil Street. Could this MOLA project be in fact an old one and refer to Theatre Royal which was modernized some years ago? :confused: Sorry I have not been in there for years and years!