REGENERATION 3.Social Regeneration Social Regeneration 3.0 Historical and Social Context There are both historic and contemporary factors which help it. At the same time, the broader area of St. Mary’s Parish – explain the extent of the social / socio-economic problems The introduction of the Housing Miscellaneous Provisions Act known in Limerick as “The Parish” – and King’s Island which now prevail in the most disadvantaged estates of in 1932 provided local authorities with a state subsidy for the including the historic area of the city around King John’s Limerick. The Regeneration Project targets approximately 3,000 provision of housing for the “working classes” for the first time. Castle and St. Mary’s Cathedral – has a proud tradition and households in these areas. It covers the area of on the The Island Field, later known as St. Mary’s Park, was strong cultural identity centred on music (e.g. St. Mary’s Fife northside comprising 1,160 houses also on the northside, St. constructed after the introduction of this legislation and was and Drum Band) and sport. There is a very strong sense of pride Mary’s Park, comprises of 440 houses. Three separate areas mostly completed by 1936. The St. Mary’s Park development in the city and in “The Parish” (Humphreys 2005). Ballinacurra are targeted 0n the Southside Regeneration comprising 1,360 was created to tackle the problem of the “festering slums that Weston, constructed a little later than St. Mary’s Park, households – O’Malley Park (600 houses) and Keyes Park (160 had so long pockmarked the city” (Kemmy 1988). It was physically lacks a focal point. Community services, developed houses), Carew Park and Kincora Park (400 houses), in the populated by people who, previously, lived in the slums of around Our Lady of Lourdes (the parish unit), is the closest to a parish of Southill, and Clarina, and Beechgrove in the Irishtown, Boherbuoy and the Abbey. They were the poorest of “centre” for the area. Like St. Mary’s Park, Ballinacurra Weston parish of Ballinacurra Weston (200 houses). The Regeneration the poor. In 1936, O’Dwyer’s Villas in , Janesboro developed a reputation for criminality and as the location of Areas have a combined population of some 10,000 people. housing estates and the larger scale estates at Prospect/ individuals engaged in serious drug-related and violent crime Ballinacurra Weston were commenced. It is noted that while with international linkages. Regeneration Social 3.0.1. Social and Economic Disadvantage in Limerick City the poor were moved from the slums to “new dwellings in airy There was extensive poverty in Limerick City (Kemmy Old spacious locations”, many tenants “dearly longed for their Southill, located in the south suburbs of the city, was construct- Limerick Journal, 1988) and a pattern of social segregation of battered but beloved hovels with all the attendant privations ed in the 1960’ and early 1970’s. It consists of the four housing the poor already emerging from the mid-nineteenth century. and squalor where they and their families had lived out their estates of Carew Park, Keyes Park, Kincora Park and O’Malley Descriptions of the social conditions of the poor were lives ... while other new residents complained that they had Park, the last estate being the largest. The estate is physically- documented by travel writers Henry D. Inglis and William been moved too far out from the centre of the city and in- bounded on all sides by undeveloped land, industrial land and Makepeace from the mid-nineteenth century and by local veighed against isolation from their old familiar haunts” (Kemmy major regional roads. It was constructed to respond to the inspectors and health committee reports into the early part of 1988). housing shortage in the city and at a time when there was an the 20th C