24/09/2025
Embracing The Challenge: Louth County Council’s Chief Executive Relishing the Role
When David Conway made his decision to take up the role of Chief Executive of Louth County Council he was assured by his then Chairman Conn Murray that he would do just fine in his new role. And given the fact that Conn had previously served as Chief Executive of Louth Council between 2007 and 2012 those words held plenty of weight.
“He told me I’d do just fine,” states David. “He understood what I had to do and he told me that it is a great place to work, and that the people are fantastic as I’m witnessing now for myself. While we may be small in nature and size we actually pack a very strong punch in terms of economic delivery and in terms of our density and Conn told me it would be absolutely like Mother’s milk here and that I’d love it and thank God that has come true.
David’s strong track record in delivering major projects made him a standout candidate for the task of replacing Joan Martin who retired from her role as Chief Executive last year. A Limerick native, he is former CEO of the National Sports Campus Development Authority responsible of the delivery of Ireland National Sports Campus which involved developing and operating the National Sports Campus, the National Aquatic Centre and National Indoor Arena.
He then became Chief Executive Officer and Board member of Limerick Twenty Thirty DAC and charged with delivering the single largest programme of investment in real estate outside of Dublin for commercial, public and residential facilities.
Since his appointment to Limerick Twenty Thirty, Conway has overseen the completion of the €30 million Gardens International building on Henry Street, the sale of the former Dell Factory as a repurposed space for film making and he’s advanced the €300 million Opera Square project through planning, demolition, enabling and commencement works.
He’s also completed the masterplan for the Riverside Cleeves 500 million euro project which will go to planning in 2025. After seven years in that role, David felt it was time for change and given the fact he has lived in Meath for a number of years he jumped at the chance to take up a job closer to home.
“I have been living in Skryne in County Meath, close to the Hill of Tara for the last 26 years and I had been on the road to Limerick for a good part of eight years while working with Project 2030. So I thought it was time to get back to my roots and then this position came up and I went for it and I’ve been blessed ever since I arrived into Louth,” states David.
Having been in the role officially since January, David has had a chance to look at the organisation as a whole and the last nine months has seen him figure out what is working and what can be improved.
“I believe in change but I believe in organised change because you don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I have been very impressed with what I’ve seen in Louth County Council and I’m not just saying that because I’m here doing an interview with you. I was reading data the other day which shows we are the most competitive in the pricing of purchasing houses, we’re ahead of schedule in terms of our stock, our strategic location is brilliant on the Belfast to Dublin economic corridor, our work force comes from both sides of the border which is really helpful.
"We’ve got fantastic tourism opportunities with our natural resources. Housing is obviously a big issue and we’re not always where we want to be but we’re going in the right direction and all in all we have fantastic people here in the organisation that just needed proper leadership.
“What I am focusing on at the moment is values in the organisation. You can see that in our corporate plan which I was lucky enough to have some input into before I took up this role. The corporate plan value system is very interesting in terms that it is citizen-centric.
Anything that the executive do, with the support and help of the councillors is done with a view of being citizen-centric. And what I mean by that is that every decision they make has to be for the good of the citizens. We need good governance because if we don’t have good governance we don’t have good protection around ourselves.
“Innovation is also very important and when I say that I’m not talking about new computers or something like that. It’s about a new way of doing things, it’s as simple as that. I’m asking the staff and the teams here how to do things a little bit differently. For example I’ve already changed the directorates since I’ve come in. We had a directorate for Operations and Major Capital Projects and in month four I split that and each of those have their own directorate now.
“One thing I’ve noticed is that we are doing great work on the ground but I don’t think that we are communicating them enough to our stakeholders, be they councillors or the general public and that’s why it’s great to have the media involved in terms of spreading the word of what we are doing. In January we expanded our communications department. We’ve added another person in there and maybe there’s a role for a third person in terms of our social media and our information gathering.
“Almost immediately after I started the job we had to deal with Storm Eowyn and we had to get those stories out and the red warnings and so on and thanks to local media we got the word out far and wide.
“Everything we do moving forward has to have a leg of sustainability to it. Recently we had 22 new electric vehicles in our fleet and that has helped us decarbonise the fleet which is essential for us to reach targets that have been set for us by government. We have to be smart even with the smaller things when it comes to sustainability. Are we using too much paper? Are we turning off the lights? How can we recycle better?
“Equality is also hugely important in Louth County Council and we need to make sure everybody is treated the same. You don’t look up, you don’t look down no matter creed, race religion we are all the same. We treat people with respect and dignity,” states David.
Working with councillors is a key part of David’s role and while the relationship between some councillors and the Chief Executive hasn’t always been rosy down through the years, David believes it is important to have a good relationship with the elected representatives of Louth.
“I am a great believer in working with people in a spirit of partnership and collaboration. We all know the phrase ‘Eye on the prize’. What’s the prize here? The prize is to make Louth a better place for people to live, work and play. We are all on the same ship and although we won’t always agree and there will be disagreements, that’s ok as long as the debates are respectful in terms of that relationship.
"I respect the councillors in terms of their functions and their roles and responsibilities and they have to be respectful in terms of the people that deliver in terms of the executive.
“And so far it’s been a good healthy relationship. So far I think I’ve spoken to nearly every councillor, be it one to one or socially or whatever and that respect is there,” added David.
With regards to tourism David believes it is key for Louth to utilize their plum location between Dublin and Drogheda and give motorists driving on the motorway between those two cities a reason to stop in Louth.
“We are in the middle of our tourism strategy at the moment and I have asked that they make sure we do a few things. The first one is that we do it through a lens of international best practice. Not to be naval gazing and do what we’ve always done. What’s working in Europe that could work here in an Irish climate? The other thing I’ve asked is that we work with our neighbours because I think collectively we could work better together like for instance what they are doing with the Boyne Valley and the various offerings they have their for tourists.
“We should explore more themes that are unique to Louth and build tourism around those themes. Recently we had the St Oliver 400 Festival in Drogheda and that was happening all over the town including a fantastic museum that was put on display in Fair Street. Why can’t we attract tourists using for instance St Brigid.
Isn’t that a theme we could explore further? There’s a few strategic themes that Dundalk and Louth are famous for and I want our tourism strategy to develop those themes and attract more tourists to this area.
When asked how he approaches resistance from certain sections of the community when working on projects like the Carlingford Greenway, David notes that he has inherited that process but that it’s a process he believes is a good one.
“I think that is one of several projects that Louth County Council are involved in to help enhance the county. There was a process I inherited there which I think is a good process. They will have preferred options for the Greenway route coming out in the next few weeks. That will go out in terms of consultation and from there we will see what is the best route forward.
“There’s other great projects going on at the moment too like our partnership with Dundalk Tidy Towns which has seen huge improvements in our town centre and alongside that you have BIDS who are helping to improve what our town centre looks like and they have done an amazing job in terms of shop fronts and so on. I had the pleasure of sitting down for coffee with my operations team outside Panama Coffee Shop at Market Square last week and I took a photograph of the Square and you could have been anywhere in Europe. It looked fantastic. And then you have all the work that is being done down in St Nicholas Quarter which will energise the North end of town.
“And the other thing that amazes me from a Dundalk perspective is that when property goes up for sale it gets sold very fast. That’s a great sign. That wasn’t happening in Limerick. And that’s because people want to live, work and play in the town and we have got to give them the opportunity to do that. We are blessed with the stock that we have and we are blessed with some fabulous restaurants and bars like Mo Chara which are hugely popular with people in town.
“We want the town to be looking the best it possible can be and we have done some good work previously but maybe that hasn’t been maintained as well as it might have been. There’s been great work done from the Courthouse up and now we need to do a bit on the Ramparts to improve that area of town.
Dumping
We’ve now got the tenders in for the CCTV, that is one mechanism we have at our disposal to reduce dumping. It’s something that you won’t be able to completely eradicate but in fairness to the litter wardens in the latest national results we had a number of convictions that were good so we are kind of leading the charge in that.
"I think the schools have done a fair amount of in helping us with that in terms of spreading that kind of culture awareness that dumping and littering are not acceptable. There’s always the serial dumpers and the diesel laundering that goes on and all we can do is hopefully eradicate that as best we can. Everybody has a part to play in that.
Population boom and keeping up infrastructurally
“One of the roles of the council is to make things happen. While we might not be the delivery agent we can definitely advise and give our views of what is needed locally. We do have regular meetings and we now have a director for infrastructure helps us to keep up to speed on what is needed as our town grows. Uisce Eireann is no longer our brief and we have to leave that to them but our road structures and our infrastructure is very much our brief and we need to be planning ahead in the next round of the County Development Plan to make that happen. We produce probably between 1200 and 1400 units every year in terms of housing stock.
"We are a commute belt and there’s good things happening such as the DART coming in as far as Drogheda now. We have an educated population and a fantastic third level college in DkIT that is very attractive for foreign investment. We have access to two international airports, we have a port company that again went into profit last year so there’s a lot of good things happening.
“But we know you always have to be planning for long term ten years ahead or medium term five years ahead and I’m always telling my team that we need to live in all three tenses. Past-what it has taught us. Present- what we need to do. And the future, where we want to get to so in a nutshell my role is to ensure we use those three tenses for the County’s benefit.
Age friendly County
“Our elderly population is increasing so we have to look at how we are housing people when they are older. We want to make sure that all our facilities are age friendly and hat they have access to technology. We have a scheme in Drogheda where 48 units are being built for age friendly accommodation where older people are downsizing and being adaptive in terms of care.
“Getting funding for all these projects can be hard but I don’t like the word can’t. I’m a glass half full person and you built on what you have and you beg, borrow or steal to get what you want. I didn’t build a National Sports Campus without having those intrinsic belief systems and I’m not trying to be big head saying that.
"It’s not about David Conway, it’s about the citizens of Louth and what we can build for them. Baby steps help you sometimes when you don’t have funding and then funding comes along so we leverage what we can from government sources and then see what we can add to that from our own resources.
“The challenges we face are making sure our infrastructure is there and our housing stock is there and you have to link those two in and make sure you have a community that provides you with somewhere to live, somewhere to shop, somewhere your kids go to school, somewhere to get medical care and somewhere that has recreation activities for all. That is what community looks like to me and we have to ensure when we are building that all these services are provided.
Refugees
I think generally misinformation around a lot of subjects and particularly this one is a challenge. I don’t do social media as I like to deal with facts. And an expression I like is that when the facts are in front of you, sometimes there are no need for words. The beneficiaries of international protection has worked well I think because it has given us extra employment opportunities and so on. We just need to make sure that processing it happens at a faster rate.
"If you look at the employment numbers at the moment they are pretty static, maybe they’ve gone up by a tiny percentage point over the summer. For a functioning economic society we need to have multi-functional, we need to have languages, we need an educational workforce and a lot of the Ukrainians who came to Ireland are now working in jobs and they have brought skills, knowledge and experience to Dundalk.
The Irish emigrated when we had to back in the day. During the 60’s it was to England mainly and before that America so I think we have benefitted as a nation with emigration and now it’s time to balance that as well.
Sports
Construction has started on a new athletics track and I’m glad to see Dundalk Grammar School got planning for a new track as well. I think sports facilities by their nature is trying to make them as multi-functional as possible and what I mean by that is that a lot of people can use them ie the dressing rooms and so on because that’s where the big money is spent.
Louth winning the Leinster Championship was fantastic this year and to see the new GAA stadium being built in Dundalk is fantastic. We’ve asked them to be age friendly when building that stadium as well, again linking the dots which is part of my role and responsibility.
The more people that participate in sport and recreational activity and given them the amenities to do those recreational activities is very important and very necessary,” stated David.
As Chief Executive of Louth County Council David leads 844 staff in the local authority with that huge team helping to make the County function in a vast array of different sections. He calls himself part of that team and credits his fantastic staff who help deliver the services around the county throughout the year. He calls it a well -oiled machine which just needs to become a bit more efficient.
“I think we’re in a great place. I think we can do a lot more. I think we just need to think strategically as a team in Louth and I think it will move in a really positive direction particularly in terms of tourism and economically and I think Louth can become an even better place to live,” concluded David.
