It can sometimes be hard to discover what other financial interests our politicians have which may influence how they think about issues before them.  It should not be so.  I want to take a new approach and have the Mayor of Limerick lead in transparency among all politicians in Ireland.  I'd love to see others to follow my example.

As everyone is perhaps aware, annually as Mayor of Limerick, like other politicians, I complete a declaration of interests.  It is designed to ensure that when I make decisions over my term any overlaps with outside interests (especially financial ones) are obvious.  It is different from the rules which require other people lobbying me to disclose themselves their efforts to influence my decisions. 

I submitted the attached declaration last Friday.  The relevant rules require that it is available to those who want to go looking for it in City Hall. 

In the interests of transparency, I believe, however, it is simply a better practice to proactively make it publicly available to all so you do not even need to disclose your own identity before you can see it.   I’d guess, between my LinkedIn, my public interviews or other emails, it is all pretty much known anyway.  But, in case not, I am releasing a copy here for all and it will appear shortly on a reconfigured mayoral page on the Limerick Council website.

Now that I have volunteered this disclosure, I’d like to call today on all our other Limerick councillors to do like me so that Limerick can lead in transparency by havinig all of our elected reps disclose their own proactively too.

My declaration will show things like the fact that Damien and I hope some day to live in our home when renovated right in the city centre.   This might be well known as we’ve done videos about it for Limerick City years ago, but it should anyway be disclosed so that people know I have a second reason to want to see Limerick City Centre become a really interesting and safe place to live.

It also records that I am involved in renting accommodation in Limerick – an important factor to know as I am involved in developing housing policies for Limerick. 

I have been lucky since I left school and university to have a very interesting career and for years I have had business dealings in and made decisions to use savings and borrow money to make investments many located in Limerick among them ones designed to also showcase the potential of Limerick’s Georgian area.

Some candidates are full time politicians.  I instead went into the election with a full suite of other professional activities.  As I announced at the time, I stopped those with the greatest conflicts (like Shannon Airport and the Hunt Museum) before the election even took place.  Others I continued as there was no guarantee after all that I would even be selected by the people of Limerick.

As will be obvious from the attached, I am well advanced in the process of transitioning away from most of these other roles in the coming months, reducing the others so that they require less time and passing the day-to-day management of personal investments more and more to others.  This is all to enable me to focus on the already challenging role of mayor.

John Moran, Mayor of Limerick

Limerick, 31^st July 2024