Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 17 June 2014

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation

Business Growth and Job Creation in Town and Village Centres: Discussion

2:10 pm

Photo of John LyonsJohn Lyons (Dublin North West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Some of the questions I had intended to ask were answered in the earlier conversation. I was in New York some time ago where Columbus Circle has the Time Warner shopping centre, which they describe as a shopping experience. Clearly, both Brown Thomas and Clerys are trying to create all those flavour enhancers for customers who go into their department stores but we must face up to the reality that whether we like it or not, many of us are buying goods online, and more of us will buy them online. We cannot buy our meal in a restaurant online but we buy other goods. That is a tough square to circle. We cannot get away from that but it is a question of how far behind we are, as retailers. I refer not just to the witnesses, but the smaller retailers. We have representatives from two major department stores before us but I am concerned, as I am sure are other members, about our local towns, which became grey during the recession. The retailers in those towns are fighting just to have some sustainability, and some have been better than others at coming up with solutions.

I am conscious that Mr. Sealey represents members from out of town centres also and it would be particularly important for him to answer my next question on which there are different points of view. Deputy Tóibín might have touched on it earlier. It concerns the variation in rates, an issue I have raised in recent years. Our planning guidelines state that towns and villages are at the heart of our retail sector yet we have allowed out of town retail units to be built to beat the band, which has been detrimental to our local towns and villages. Is it not the case that if we want to enforce planning guidelines, the rates should reflect the guidelines? If we want to keep the heart of retail in our towns, villages and big cities, that must be reflected in the way we charge rates. I refer to the competitive advantage a retailer has in Dundrum shopping centre or a large Tesco store which has other ancillary services and multiple car parking spaces. I believe they pay for those spaces through development levies, which answer was given earlier. They do not have them for free, so to speak. I believe they pay for them somewhere along the line. If we want to reinforce our guidelines and make our towns and city centres the heart of retail, should we not have a variation in rates to reflect that? I accept it is complicated but should we not have what has been done in the North? Essentially, it would be something like a Tesco tax, to use that name. That is the major question to which I would like an answer.

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