Limerick Rugby Experience Closure Discussion

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122775822#Comment_122775822

They brought in the best of the best. Guinness, Titanic and EPIC are all award winners.

They are also possibly the 3 biggest stories to ever come out of this country and in "capital" cities. The Rugby thing was just a terrible idea.

Cookiemunster

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122775853#Comment_122775853

I believe I said that most don't agree with you. A number of people agreeing with you on here doesn't make that statement incorrect.

Why should I come up with solutions to make it viable? That's down to the people running the place. And even with JPs backing they weren't able to do so.

And you're definitely not doing so by posting random ideas on boards.

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122775791#Comment_122775791

They did commit to one. It was never called a museum but rather an "experience". "Museum" was just something it was getting called locally.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122775853#Comment_122775853

I would be all for the government funding bit but Martin pretty much ruled that out today and he was probably right to. If I wasn't from Limerick I wouldn't want national government pouring money into this sinkhole.

Its not the governments or councils job to make this private building viable at the expense of other services. It's no different to all the other empty ones except it's taller and JP tried to pull a fast one trying to offload it.

The far more historically significant Barrington's is also about to be empty.

rjoe90

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122775912#Comment_122775912

It is partially the government’s responsibility though to have cities like Limerick prosperous. It is the perfect location for a thriving city.

Maybe he did try to pull a fast one offloading but I would like to see the council exhaust every avenue possible before giving up on it.

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122775932#Comment_122775932

The government funding a white elephant won't make the city prosperous.

All the suggestions people have put up are loss makers. Things like cinemas and leisureplex if viable would have private companies putting their hands up.

There is forever talk about an art house cinema in the city. Usually from people who have never heard of or couldn't be arssed going to Limehouse.

CONSI

Indoor golf simulators, tapas/wine bar at the top..something like pitch dublin or kworld golf

- https://www.kclub.ie/k-golf-world.html?srsltid=AfmBOoov6C-bpvAgFY100Xv2ucgB2v3W5lDvsw2htp3RPOCLt2zjpX5f

rjoe90

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122776004#Comment_122776004

Not alone but it certainly would help. The only thing that would get the city thriving is more people living and working in the centre.

adaminho

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122775912#Comment_122775912

On Barrington's the government should turn it to a museum to when the health system actually worked!

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122776080#Comment_122776080

The Dr.Noel Browne Museum. Problem is if it was successful it would just be another massive healthcare waiting list 🤣

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122776041#Comment_122776041

Totally agree on the living and working part.

callaway92

For some reason, people think Rugby is more popular than it actually is. I think that’s a big part of it failing. Generally it’s bandwagon fans - really not many hardcore fans of it.

ricimaki

Live 95FM radio piece with International Rugby Experience (IRE) CEO Barry Hannon and Director Keith Wood.

https://shows.acast.com/live-95-limerick-today-podcasts/episodes/international-rugby-experience-management-responds-to-sudden

Summary of the first 15 minutes (Not my opinions - Listen to it yourselves for full context!):

• It would need to be subsidised from day one
• Day one plan was to give this to Limerick council/Irish State
• 65K visitors to date
• Timeline
  • Oct/Dec 2023 open session with Limerick council
    • Council fully aware of cost of €500K per year. MacManus would support transition of building to state ownership with donation of €1.2 Million, 3 year transition, ask of €100K per year from council
    • Goal to keep it open until after Ryder Cup
  • After election of the Mayor, independent review of the process called in, took place over the summer
  • Report signed off 23rd August, supported all numbers above.
    • Council executive were asked to bring this to the government at this time
  • The report had been "Edited and Manipulated along the way" according to which IRE had first seen last Friday (Oct 26th 2024)
    • 4 additional items added with additional costs €6.2M
      • Stamp duty, VAT, Re-imagining costs, redundancy payments
      • Not mutually agreed between IRE and the Mayor, presented to councillors
      • Numbers are overinflated, cover potential problems down the road, but each problem has their own solution
• IRE excluded from the process with the council
• This was never setup to be a commercial venture - it was setup to be a rugby experience

Cookiemunster

It was never set up as a commercial venture? WTF? And they always intended to offload it on to the taxpayer knowing it was loss making from day one?

Fair play to Mayor Moran for running a mile from this turkey.

Also 65k visitors in 17 months when the target was 100k a year.

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122776963#Comment_122776963

We should buy it and make it the mayor's office for the laugh. It will really pisss people off 🤣

Vanquished

Wood and Hannon also said that there was a realisation and an expectation from the very early stages of the conceptual phase of the project that the rugby experience would only have a shelflife of a few years before an alternative use would need to be found for the building.

So the business case never stacked up for the project and the intention was always to offload a tall narrow building with limited and inflexible floorspace to a local authority with limited funds outside of central government transfers and zero history of innovative or imaginative thinking. Yet many braindead Councillors are adamant that the Council take it on despite not being able to propose a single workable solution to bridge the funding gap to keep the current facility going. Nevermind the additional costs of officially taking possesion of what is currently being run as a charitable endeavour (stamp duty, VAT) and future adaptations and renovations to the building.

This really is a sh1tshow of epic proportions!

MayoSalmon

Not the role of government at all actually

Not made with hands

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122775853#Comment_122775853

The city is well served by coffee shops. I'm not sure what sort of a rent they could make from it, it would only be a drop in the ocean in the cost of operating the place.

Hibernicis

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122776803#Comment_122776803

Thank you for the excellent summary.

Where the hell are they gong with their cost of €500,000 per year to run it - it was previously said to have over 50 employees. That makes zero sense before you ever throw in insurance, utilities, maintenance, etc etc.

And basic maths says it's a four year transition (2025,2026,2027,2028) based on what was put in the public domain in the IRE statement (The proposed offer would have seen the building free to be used for any civic purpose by Limerick City and County Council after 2028.) and various similar statements.

"This was never setup to be a commercial venture - it was setup to be a rugby experience" Dumbest thing I've heard today - if it wasn't to be a commercial venture who was expected to pick up the tab.

The more this goes on, the more it looks like there never was a plan, at least nowhere outside the owner's head.

LCC, the Mayor and the government (i.e the ratepayers and the tax payer) are fortunate to have nothing to do with this and lets hope to hell that nothing that gets said during the election changes this. I'd be hopping mad if one cent of my tax ends up going to prop up this idiotic vanity project.

Let the owner sort out his own mess, thats if he doesn't already have a plan, which I suspect he may well have.

Red Silurian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122776803#Comment_122776803

Firstly thanks for summarising

Secondly I can understand a lot of this but specifically

4 additional items added with additional costs €6.2M

• Stamp duty, VAT, Re-imagining costs, redundancy payments

Stamp duty and VAT - if it's a donation to the city these should both be zero…

Re-imagining costs - This was designed to be a turnkey product, what "re-imagining" needed to be done?

Redundancy payments - Were they planning to make people redundant? Were they planning to pay them despite not having been there for 24 consecutive months?

I'm not suggesting you personally have the answers but these "additional costs" are curious ones

Brennans Row

Mayor Moran pitches €100,000 to keep International Rugby Experience in the game (Limerick Post)

Mayor John Moran said this week that he was willing to dig into his mayoral fund to meet a €100,000 annual operational cost deficit to keep the “loss-making” International Rugby Experience open until after the 2027 Ryder Cup, if it would bring representatives of the tourist attraction back to the negotiating table.

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To be honest the damage has been done and nationally, people will now perceive that the International Rugby Experience is a failed enterprise.

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The Limerick-Cork issue must be sorted for Munster to progress (Extra Hugh Farrelly)

There were not too many tears shed in Cork last week when it was announced that Limerick’s ‘International Rugby Experience’ was to close.

‘Good enough for ya’, was the general response on Leeside.

It spoke to a long-held Cork conviction that Limerick rugby has ‘notions’ about its self-declared status as the ‘home of rugby’

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I must admit I was surprised by this "Schadenfreude" in Cork but then again he writes for the Irish Daily Mail.

That sort of talk is promoting Munster get split up into two clubs, Thomond and Musgrave.

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Brennans Row

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tDdmWxEbIQ

Limerick Mayor reacts to International Rugby Experience closure.

Brennans Row

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=cKKwTsxenmY

Irish Tourism Industry Confederation interview with Barry Hannon (IRE) in August 2023.

Hibernicis

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122784321#Comment_122784321

Thank you for posting this. Very interesting.

A lot of discrepancies and quite a difference in emphasis between this and the interview with Wood and Hannon which @ricimaki linked to yesterday. Quite a bit more information emerging as well. I thought Moran handled himself well in what was the tougher of the two interviews.

Two very different issues involved. The loss making IRE, and separately the more complex issues around the ownership of the building.

A lot of the issues didn't emerge until a jointly agreed independent assessment was commissioned at John Moran's suggestion after his election. This brought a lot of the nasties and gotchas onto the table.

The basis of the 2027 continuation clause is that the owner wants it to continue as the Rugby Experience until 2027 so that it is available for his Adare hotel golf thing.

The 500k figure isn't the annual cost of running the fiasco, it's the annual loss, a totally different and much more significant issue.

The owner's outfit entered into negotiation with the Council on handing it over "in good faith" in October 2023, and the extent of the losses was made known to the Council in December 2023. However according to Wood, "it was always the intention that it would be handed over to the Council, right from the very outset". Would it not have been an idea to sit down with the Council right at the very outset and thrash out a plan/agreement then, rather than waiting until it was build, running and loosing a shedload of money before trying to dump the hot potato in the Council's lap in October 2023 ?

A lot more to this than was initially suggested. And a much stinkier proposition.

Not made with hands

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122780710#Comment_122780710

I don't think a split into 2 clubs is being considered.

But they are kind of right though, Limerick isn't really "the home of rugby" at least not any more.

The whole Munster rugby explosion was born out of the Limerick success in the AIL, but that's nearly 30 years ago now.

A few high profile Munster games in the SuperValu will boost the product overall.

Cookiemunster

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122784762#Comment_122784762

It's not being and never will be considered. Farrelly is a well known WUM. Ignore him.

And the AIL only began 33 years ago. So Limerick dominance was a lot more recent than that.

Either way, the IRE has got absolutely nothing to do with Munster Rugby or the IRFU.

Not made with hands

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122785065#Comment_122785065

When was a Limerick dominant then?

I'd have said the 1990's.

Munster only took off around 2000 at which point AIL attendance collapsed at it became a feeder league.

Crazy Davey

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122777148#Comment_122777148

absolutely! This was a farce from the get go

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122785384#Comment_122785384

A lot of the myths and legends of Limerick rugby come from the pub scene where we seem to have had an unusually large number of rugby owned pubs in the city centre.

But ya the Munster thing was only invented in the 00's and since then the whole country has fooled itself into over inflating how big rugby is in Ireland and the world.

Not made with hands

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122785438#Comment_122785438

Rugby also filled a void when success on the GAA field was zero.

I heard Frank Hogan had his show cars on display at the Limerick GAA classic.

Speaks volumes.

geotrig

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122784762#Comment_122784762

look the home of rugby **** is misnomer but it has it roots in the fact we had 7(?) clubs that catered for all in a small enough footprint of the city,I would say rugby was the dominant sport here for a long time, The explosion of "munster" while always highly thought of here and presume in cork and rest of munster?(I don't know corks stance on it )was borne more out of how the future of rugby was envisaged by irfu /munster branch etc to the detrimant of the Ail and limerick clubs really ,since then there has definitely been a decline in the clubs here.

But I'm not sure what any of the private investment in the Int rugby exp has to do with any of that.

I'm honestly at a loss where all this is at the moment ,the waters have definitely been muddied ? Now I was always under the impression that it was to be handed over to the council as well, but tbh I Don't know at what point this was first mentioned ,the running costs and transfer costs issue should have been something that raised there heads earlier in this debacle at the end of the day there is 50 people employed caught up in this. its akin to one of those you've just won 5 mil but you need to send me 100k first to free it up type things. I do think its good that the costs of running it are been questioned at least.

Cookiemunster

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122785384#Comment_122785384

Well actually Limerick dominated the AIL until the end of the 00s. Since then it's been dominated by the Dublin clubs, with an honorable mention to Con who managed to break the stranglehold on the odd occasion.

Also AIL attendances didn't collapse. They slowly dwindled to what's there today, but were still very healthy going into the 2010s.

Either way this is irrelevant to the IRE. It's a private venture build by a GAA and horse racing man which has nothing to do with 'Limerick rugby'. Even if every citizen of Limerick was a fervent rugby fan, it wouldn't be enough to keep the IRE going. Most on here with a rugby background questioned where the visitors would come from when it was being proposed.