Moyross calls for short avenue to TUS to compliment new €84m road

“Today is not just about a road being opened. It is about barriers being removed. Roads don’t just shape how we move; they shape access to opportunity, to education, to employment, and to each other,” he said.

While celebrating the road opening, Mr Power, speaking for the community, criticised local councillors who are opposing the opening of an avenue from Moyross to TUS university that would complement the work celebrated today. For decades, Moyross people were confined to living in what was termed Ireland’s biggest cul-de-sac, surrounded by a wall.

• ABOVE: Video  from Limerick City and County Council marking the official opening today by Minister for Transport, Darragh O Brien, of the Moyross Link Road connecting from Coonagh to the Knockalisheen Road.

The Coonagh to Knockalisheen Road, linking in with Moyross, was officially opened by Minister for Transport, Darragh O’Brien, today. It is a key milestone in a scheme that will deliver a 2.1km of urban dual carriageway along with upgraded infrastructure for pedestrians, cyclists and public transport users. The €84 million project, funded by the Department of Transport, is being led by Limerick City and County Council in partnership with Clare County Council. It is key part of the Limerick Regeneration Framework Implementation Plan.

However, to truly open up Moyross, a short link road – recommended years ago in regeneration plans – must be constructed to directly connect Moyross with TUS. This link road, called University Avenue, would also directly connect passengers to the new train station planned for Moyross – handy for students, workers and rugby and GAA fans attending matches in nearby Thomond Park and The Gaelic Grounds.

Mr Power recalled his youth:

“I grew up here in Moyross without the basic everyday infrastructure and access that most people my age would take for granted. I grew up feeling I was walled in, like I was some sort of animal, and at times, I was treated as such.

“I grew up within the walls that surround my community watching my friends lose their lives to drugs and violence, because they didn’t have another way out, literally. I grew up with a sense of inferiority that I still feel today because of those walls.

“So this train station and University Avenue is not just another battle for much needed infrastructure. It’s a battle for our dignity, a battle to secure our children’s future,” he said.

Despite opposition by a number of councillors – all from government parties, Mr Power pointed out – the construction of Moyross Avenue would be for the betterment of all of Limerick. While the new road that opened today is hugely welcome, the community remains separated from much of the city’s northside by a 2.1km long wall and fence that turns a 5-minute walk to TUS into 25 minutes. Only 48% of families living in Moyross own a car and even then, the wall adds 10 minutes to journeytime. However, the wall creates more than a physical barrier as Mr Power and many others have emphasised over the years.

• ABOVE: Watch all 8 minutes of Adrian Power’s impassioned speech. 

An OECD group visiting TUS in 2015 (called LIT back then) were horrified by the separation wall. The group leader Gabi Kaffka wrote to LIT saying: “Higher education institutions seek to be accessible to students from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds. The Limerick Institute of Technology is faced with a singular, remarkable challenge in terms of physical accessibility. Its campus is literally fenced off to one side by a concrete wall.”

She added: “LIT has recognised the symbolic dimension of the wall’s existence and seeks to have the wall eradicated. To do so, it is working together with public administration of the city which is in charge of tearing down that wall.”

She also wrote for Changing Ireland saying:

“Children from the Moyross neighborhood are aware of the physical barrier that the wall represents, adding to the ‘social distance’ between the academic world and their own. This physical obstacle will be perceived as (yet another) obstacle to higher education entry, influencing their perception of accessibility of the LIT, and ultimately their aspiration to attend higher education. The wall is, in that sense, a spatial reminder of the socio-economic differences between one side of the wall and the other – a symbol for the distance between the working class and the academic world.”

That was over a decade ago now.

As Mr Power said, “For decades, communities like Moyross continue to experience physical separation from the rest of the city — through poor planning decisions that, whether intentional or not, leaving lasting impacts on the community. As Mayor John Moran previously outlined in his mayoral plan – for Limerick to achieve, all areas of Limerick need to achieve.”

Earlier, the Mayor – recalling the fall of the Berlin Wall and other walls in Belfast – said: “When it comes to looking at the University Way, I want people to think of it as a piece of the pie that regenerates the rest of the city with Moyross. I want people to think of it as not a street that closes at night, but a street that opens up opportunities.”

The wall surrounding Moyross is 4.25 metres high in places.

Opening up Moyross would connect Limerick people to a suburb which now has top-class community and sports facilities, the county’s largest library, a Tesco store, shops and a petrol station – and soon a new hospital, a new train station and possibly an Aldi store.

While celebrating the opening of the new road to Coonagh, Mr Power said, “Now we have to battle for University Way. Even though it was one of the key recommendations of the Limerick Regeneration Framework Implementation Plan, and it would of course align with the national strategic active travel plans, it is in jeopardy, because those same councillors will not have it.”

Mr Power was one of a number of speakers who addressed a celebratory event held in Moyross Community Centre after the road opening. The other speakers were Mayor of Limerick John Moran, Cathaoirleach of Clare County Council, Cllr Paul Murphy, Chief Councillor, Cllr Catherine Slattery, and Donal O’Donoghue, Department of Transport.

READ ADRIAN POWER’S FULL SPEECH HERE:

Good afternoon, Minister Darragh O’Brien, Mayor John Moran, elected representatives, officials, colleagues, and members of the Moyross community.

It is a great honour for me, as Chairperson of Moyross Partners, to stand here today at the official opening of the Coonagh to Knockalisheen Road, including the Moyross spur road – an occasion that marks far more than the completion of a piece of infrastructure.

Today represents progress. And for the people of Moyross, it represents something that has been a long time coming.

For decades, communities like Moyross continue experience physical separation from the rest of the city—through poor planning decisions that, whether intentional or not, left lasting impacts on the community. Roads don’t just shape how we move; they shape access to opportunity, to education, to employment, and to each other.

So today is not just about a road being opened. It is about barriers being removed.

This new road, and crucially the inclusion of the Moyross spur, is the road that opens Moyross out. It is the road that stops Moyross from being the largest Cul De Sac in the state.

It signals a shift in how we think about our city and its communities. It says that Moyross is not on the edge anymore— and it wants to be part of, and central to Limerick’s future.

I want to especially thank the community of Moyross, for the fight it put up, just to get the road over the line. It was monumental effort, and showed the power of a community when it sticks together.

There’s an old saying here in Moyross, and especially amongst the partners group: That everything is a battle. This road was a battle. Any bit of progress for this community always seems to be a battle.

This road lays the foundation for the next phase of development and connection, including stronger links to education, transport, and economic activity. Moyross is finally open, but now we need to be connected.

As we all know, something that will hopefully be delivered in the lifetime of this government, the addition of a new Train Station, right behind us here, will continue this progress to a more integrated Moyross…. But only if it is done right.

It is our belief here in Moyross, that in order for this train station to reach its absolute full potential, the University Way road scheme needs to be delivered alongside it. University Way is a proposed 400m piece of road that would directly connect Moyross to our neighbours and to Limerick City for the first time in its history.

And crucially, it would connect the train station in Moyross directly to local amenities and institutions such as the Technological University of the Shannon, Thomond Park, and the Gaelic Grounds.

As we stand, without this road, passengers availing of the train stop in Moyross, would need to walk 3km either way around the walls of Moyross just to get to those places. This makes absolutely no sense, and would be a complete contradiction of the national Active Travel policies that I know the Minister, and his colleagues in the NTA are striving to achieve.

This is not to mention the fact that students from Clare, Galway, and surrounding counties could commute to TUS to study and ease the pressure on student accommodation in Limerick.

You can literally see TUS from where we stand. But without University Way, those same students, who will look to walk in the direction of TUS, will be met with the same barriers and walls blocking them access that we have lived with here in Moyross for 40 years.

The mission of the Moyross Partners group for over 30 years was to connect Moyross to Limerick. Now, with the new train station, we have the opportunity to connect Ireland to Moyross. We cannot let this opportunity slip away. But it will slip away if University Avenue is not realised.

Unfortunately, and it gives me no satisfaction to say this, it is mainly northside councillors from government parties, Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, who are actively blocking University Way from going through.

The two thousand constituents who live in Moyross have never had the luxury of those local councillors, who are meant to serve them – they never offered them any dialogue, support or leadership around this issue.

And now we have to battle for University Way too. Even though it was one of the key recommendations of the Limerick Regeneration Framework Implementation Plan, and it would of course align with the national strategic active travel plans, it is in jeopardy, because those same councillors will not have it. Some have built their local political strategy around blocking it.

This is all a means to block progress, to block connection, to block a physical and psychological pathway to provide belonging and opportunity to a community that has been chewed up and spat out by the very institutions and leaders tasked to protect it.

I grew up here in Moyross without the basic everyday infrastructure and access that most people my age would take for granted. I grew up feeling I was walled in, like I was some sort of animal, and at times, I was treated as such.

I grew up within the walls that surround my community watching my friends lose their lives to drugs and violence, because they didn’t have another way out, literally. I grew up with a sense of inferiority that I still feel today because of those walls.

So this train station and University Avenue is not just another battle for much needed infrastructure. It’s a battle for our dignity, a battle to secure our children’s future.

As Mayor John Moran previously outlined in his mayoral plan – for Limerick to achieve, all areas of Limerick need to achieve.

If we don’t continue on the progress made today, and if the Moyross Train Station and University Way is not realised, then we will be left with the reality that we’ve always known – that for all the progress that’s been made in Moyross over the past 20 years, still now in 2026, the children of Moyross do not have the same equality and opportunities in life as children from their neighbouring communities. That’s a fact.

We can pretend it’s different, but as long and those gates stay closed, and those walls stay up, and no connection is built, then there’s no other place to live but in reality. And those physical and structural barriers, those walls that are imposed on the children of Moyross, will be a tangible reminder of that reality.

And that reality is, our society, our local political leadership have failed to provide generations of kids in Moyross with the inalienable rights that every child should have. Opportunity. Equality. Dignity. Access and Connection.

If this road is not passed, then another generation of young people in Moyross will be denied those rights.

Everyday I go to work in Corpus Christi primary school, and I see just over 400 happy, smiling, and beautiful kids enter those gates and I just don’t know how can we live with not providing them with the best possible future. I don’t know what type of politics that is. And to be fair, there are many in this room and I don’t see that type of politics in them either. The Minister has played his part in providing children in Moyross with homes and connection, I only hope your party colleagues locally can follow your lead, and deliver University Way.

We have to be better than this.

Today is a milestone, and it is one that deserves to be recognised and celebrated. But today is only the first step in creating a better future for Moyross and Limerick. I can only hope that Minister, that we might see him again soon with good news for Moyross around the train station, and to continue his own fine record in delivering for this small but proud community.

Thank you very much.