In prime position to greet visitors to the city as they arrived at Colbert Station, a billboard advertisement for The Examiner showing one of the most famous sights in Limerick, that of the Shannon river and King John’s Castle. 

The only problem was, the scene was crossed with yellow tape bearing the words ‘CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS’, and in the upper left corner of the advert read ‘Just how safe is Limerick?’

When a snap of the advert went viral on social networking sites on Monday evening, the reaction was instant, and heated. Residents of the Treaty City were enraged to see their home depicted this way, and calls for a boycott of the newspaper responsible quickly gathered momentum.

The original advertisment for the Irish Examiner

It later transpired that the advert was one of a series, with similar versions found in other cities across the country, but for Limerick residents it was deemed a low blow to a population determined to overcome what they see as a hugely unfair reputation for high levels of crime, something that is detrimental to visitor numbers in the city.

To have such a banner in a position where it is one of the first things seen by anyone arriving by bus and train to the city was deemed unacceptable, and by this morning, it is no more.

This picture, sent to us by Cillian Flynn (@cillfly) on Twitter this morning, shows that someone in Limerick took the matter into their own hands overnight.