Galway City Council has voted to adopt a new plan outlining the future economic and community development of the city up to 2021.
The Galway City Local Economic and Community Plan aims to make Galway a world-class creative and innovative city, promoting inclusion, equality, health and wellbeing, and a sustainable urban environment.
Councillors voted tat their last meeting to adopt a broad outline of the plan, which will see an action plan published each year outlining the annual priorities of the strategy.
The plan aims to bolster Galway’s standing as a creative city with a strong technological and entrepreneurial industry base, as well as promote inclusion and equality in the city which has, according to the report, a non-Irish population amounting to nearly 20 per cent of residents. Other priorities outlined in the document including addressing educational disadvantage and developing a single coherent brand narrative for the city.
The plan follows the publication in July of the Galway Baseline Study by the Whitaker Institute at NUI Galway, which outlines opportunities for the future economic growth of Galway city and county, and the development of galwaydashboard.ie, a website which acts as a hub for civic data about the region.
“It’s a vision for Galway,” Cllr Niall McNelis, who sat on the advisory steering group for the plan, said of the document. “The reason businesses come here is the lifestyle, and it’s attracting other businesses. We have a considerable number of weaknesses but if we look at it every year we can see if we’ve made progress and we can build on that.”
Liam Hanrahan, senior executive officer with Galway City Council, who presented the plan to councillors, said that annual plans would be published outlining the actions to be taken under the plan from year to year, and providing timelines for their completion.
The plan was broadly welcomed by councillors, who adopted it unanimously.
