Mayor calls for more investment in city

Mayor calls for more investment in the city
The designation this year of Galway as Europe’s Micro City by a leading international newspaper will be tapped into with a new economic strategy which is being developed in a collaboration between Galway City and Galway County Council.
However, national agencies need to play their part by directing investment away from the east coast and towards Galway in order to allow it develop its potential.
The message came from Mayor of Galway City, Cllr Donal Lyons, in an address he gave to the Galway Chamber of Commerce on Monday on economic development in Galway. The meeting was attended by An Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, and Mayor Lyons made a direct appeal to him in relation to targeting Galway for an increase in development funding.
“It is my belief, and that of my colleagues on the City Council, that Galway City and region is not getting its fair share of itineraries to the city through the IDA from a foreign direct investment perspective. We believe that Government policy in this regard needs changing and this is something I would ask you to look at with your colleagues in Government,” Mayor Lyons said.
The title of Micro City bestowed on the city by the Financial Times is an opportunity for Galway City Council to “lever Galway’s latent potential” according to Mayor Lyons, who said that the two local authorities in Galway were collaborating on an economic vision for the city and county as a whole.
“In 2014, the Financial Times designated Galway as Europe’s Micro City. This is something that we intend to continue with so that Galway becomes a world-class first choice location in which to live, to work, and to do business. The city is open for business and it is the intention of the City Council to build and lever on Galway’s latent potential,” he said.
Part of that building on the city’s potential is the drawing up of a coherent economic strategy for the city and county, which Mayor Lyons said was already underway.
“It is, therefore, very important that the City continues to grow economically to underpin its role as the Regional Capital of the West of Ireland. It will be very important that the new National Spatial Strategy will recognise Galway’s role as the leading gateway in the West,” he said.
Mayor Lyons said that while much work was being done on a local level to promote Galway as the centre of the West, it needed to be reciprocated on a national level.
“It is equally important that the City’s Gateway status will be embedded in the Regional Economic Strategy that will be developed by the BMW Regional Assembly on the back of the revised National Spatial Strategy.
“It is for this reason that the City and County Councils have begun the preparation of their joint Economic Strategy so that an accurate, robust and fit-for-purpose annunciation of Galway’s case exists to feed into these other developments,” he said.
For more on this story, see the Galway City Tribune.