More to Limerick than Frank McCourt and Michael Dell

By Sid Astbury Aug 9, 2011, 3:06 GMT

Limerick, Ireland - - Limerick's most famous son is Frank McCourt, whose misery-ridden memoir of a 1930s childhood in the Irish Republic's third-largest city earned him a Pulitzer prize in 1996.

The locals were upset that the best-selling Angela's Ashes portrayed the people of Limerick as depraved. Neighbours were uncaring, the Catholic Church was repressive and life for many was brutish and short.

But the town has a generous spirit and McCourt was forgiven. In 1997 the New York resident received an honorary degree from Limerick University.

The Angela's Ashes Walking Tour is popular with tourists keen to immerse themselves in the Depression era and take in the sights and sounds of a book that was turned into a Hollywood film starring Robert Carlyle and Emily Watson.

Angela's Ashes opens with the line: 'When I look back on my childhood, I wonder how I survived at all.' In his lighter moments, McCourt might have recalled the joys that must have also been a part of that childhood.

Limerick is a lovely city and there was fun to be had in the Shannon River that runs through it and among the rolling hills that overlook it. There are lots of open spaces still, with marshlands stretching out to the estuary and the Atlantic Ocean.

There is the splendid Norman-built King John's Castle, in the middle of a town that in the 13th Century was separated into English and Irish quarters.

McCourt, who had arrived in Limerick when he was four, left before he was 20, joining the diaspora of escapees from poverty and privation.

Reminders of the exodus can be seen from the four bridges spanning the Shannon. The quaysides that are today quiet promenades were once loud with boatmen hawking passages to the New World.

Nowadays, the easiest transit point is the international airport, just 20 minutes from the city centre. Dublin is a four-hour motorway trip away.

The city of 90,000 is itself a magnet for people leaving their homeland in search of a better life. The Polish community is 10,000-strong, with its own shops and its own bank.

Limerick has Ireland's tallest hotel, a monument perhaps to times past. The Clarion opened in 2002 when the Irish economy was a wonder of the modern world. Texas-based Dell Corp had opened its biggest computer manufacturing operation outside the United States in Limerick in 1991 and optimism was soaring.

Like Frank McCourt before him, Dell chairman Michael Dell has become a Limerick bogeyman. After 17 years in the city, Dell moved its Limerick production lines to the Polish city of Lodz last year. Around 1,900 jobs were lost and the unemployment rate rose to sit among Ireland's highest.

Walk down O'Connell Street, Limerick's top retail address, and the busy shops suggest the city is still going strong. The street is lined with Georgian buildings that have hardly changed since McCourt passed them by 80 years ago.