President Mary McAleese has unveiled the largest regeneration project ever undertaken in the State.
President Mary McAleese
Two separate "vision plans" for Limerick's Moyross housing estate and the Southill and Ballinacurra Weston areas on the south side of the city will involve the demolition of some 2,000 houses and a rebuilding programme.
Measures to tackle anti-social behaviour and to tackle disadvantage are key to the two plans.
The plans include policing intervention, economic and infrastructural regeneration and a co-ordinated response to social and educational disadvantage, according to the Limerick Regeneration Agency.
The documents, entitled Our Community, Our Vision, Our Future, also include plans for a new town centre for Moyross, new neighbourhood centres for Southill and Ballinacurra Weston and new Garda stations in Moyross and Southill.
Speaking in Limerick today, Mrs McAleese said the plans were about "communities taking charge of their own destiny".
'The people of Moyross and Southill know how draining and depressing it is to feel excluded, forgotten, left out, to watch a culture of anti-social behaviour grip their streets and prey on young and old alike, to grow cynical about the agencies that are supposed to help citizens, to come close to giving up all hope of a normal life," she said.
"Today is about communities saying we're done with the past, we're not doing it again, and the future is going to be very different."
Mrs McAleese said Ireland had seen "amazing progress" in terms of peace and building prosperity for the country as a whole. "It is time that that spirit of transforming change was felt in Moyross and Southill. A huge start is being made today with the launch of these vision documents.
"But since what is involved here is a challenge and responsibility, not just for the communities in Moyross and Southill, but for all of us in Irish society, our pledge, society's pledge today, must be to learn from our failures and support these, and other communities, as they turn their vision into full reality."
Chairman of Limerick Regeneration John Fitzgerald said in his foreword to the reports that he was pleased with the "very strong" Government support and was "very confident" that the "much needed transformation" can be achieved.
He acknowledged that the task is "not an easy one," however, and will not happen overnight.
Planners will start their work in late February with the aim of finalising a social, physical and economic "master plan" by June 30th.
Mr Fitzgerald recommended that two separate regeneration agencies be set up in the north side and the south side of Limerick and that 100 extra gardaí be recruited to tackle crime.