Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The requirement is to refurbish. It must be noted that all the Georgian houses we are talking about in this pilot project are all listed buildings. This will be a hard project to get off the ground because of the restrictions that are always placed on listed buildings. That means that, in the first instance, planning permission will have to be obtained from the local authority before major refurbishment can take place. The Bill includes provisions whereby the local authorities must grant permission for the works to take place before works can commence. Then they must provide certification that the cost and standard of these works is acceptable. There will be an input from the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht and, I presume, from the Georgian Society, because we had some preliminary contact with it. If the scheme becomes too restrictive, it will not happen. What we want is to get people back living in the city and we want them living in buildings that are appropriately refurbished to maintain their architectural integrity. In my briefing note I said that we would envisage a number of residential units being in one of those large buildings. Previously, in their heyday, in the first Georgian phase, they operated on an upstairs and downstairs basis but they were all the one residence.

To put them into two or more residences is obviously a change of use from what they were historically but I think that can be done very tastefully. It seems that would require the installation of lifts. Some have lifts installed already because they were operating for a number of years as multi-floor offices with different renters at different floor levels. Some still have the stairways. The common factor is that the facades look reasonably well but they are empty and most have no economic or social use at present. There are exceptions but that is the way with most of them. This is an attempt to revitalise them. I am conscious of what the Chairman has said. The restrictions have to be put in place to protect the architectural integrity of the buildings and, at the same time, they have to be doable.

If a family pays €50,000, €60,000 or €80,000 for one of these buildings which requires serious refurbishment and if the restrictions put on them add a couple of hundred thousand euro to the refurbishment costs, there comes a point where it is not worth doing. Ultimately, it has to relate to the market. As one can only get tax write-offs to the maximum of the income tax one pays, there is an automatic cap on what can happen. It is worth trying. I am aware that the new local authority intends planning to develop some of the two storey and the three storey Georgian buildings which are in other parts of the city. It can fulfil that part of the commitment to make it a living city. There are several storey Georgian buildings uptown around the Crescent and the railway station and from the Crescent to the People's Park where the most demonstrable buildings are located. There are Georgian terraces elsewhere. I can see how some of them would work immediately because they are within the compass of somebody who would like to live in the city and would get the tax break. It would be an attractive thing to do. What inhibits the uptown end of the project is the very size of the buildings, unless one was able to divide.