Mr. David Fitzsimons:

I thank the joint committee for its time today. Retail Excellence Ireland is Ireland's largest retail industry group, with more than 1,000 member companies operating 11,000 stores across the country in our villages, towns and cities.

To kick off, I would appreciate it if we could go back a couple of years. In 2012, we felt towns were under tremendous pressure. Even in the adversarial setting of upward-only rents, those giving out the most were smaller retailers in smaller towns and villages. The reason was the retail mix. The offer that was the town centre was depleted, diminished and, in some cases, derelict. Mr. Cormac Kennedy came to chair a committee and we carried out the largest ever assessment of what citizens wanted from their towns. We were delighted that the Independent News and Media group contributed €400,000 in advertising, and we undertook a significant national campaign. We interviewed 17,000 citizens and found that there were a number of key drivers in bringing people to town centres.

The first was proximity. Obviously, if a person lives closer to a town, they are more likely to visit it. The second was the retail mix. Car parking was sixth. The point that came across very clearly to us is that one can pay people to go to certain towns and cities and if the retail mix was not right, they would not come. There was too much discussion about car parking charges whereas the fundamental point was that the retail and hospitality mix had depleted and was not engaging people and thus they were getting in their cars and going up the road to Kildare Village or Dundrum or wherever.

In 2013, we designed a framework for managing the town which we published through Chambers Ireland and lots of business associations and groups to advise people on how one manages a town. The best thing we did during that year was establish a national town management executive chaired by Mr. Kennedy. It involves the County and City Managers' Association, Fáilte Ireland, Chambers Ireland, An Garda Síochána and NAMA. We came together and said that we would work together as a national group to assist smaller towns and cities around the country.

In that regard, we opened an invitation to become a pilot town to work with us over the coming 12 months. Limerick and Carlow won that competition. We were overawed by the number of applications. Today we continue to work with Limerick and Carlow. We are doing three things in both locations that will work anywhere. The first is getting the infrastructure right so we have established town teams. This includes every single stakeholder, not just local government and chambers of commerce, but voluntary groups, tidy towns groups and educationalists - young and old. We have put together a plan with three simple pillars.

The first is retail and hospitality investment which is filling the boxes and looking at innovative use for those boxes. In some cases, we broke the law and convinced the local authority to offer some kind of rates incentive, which they now do in the form of a grant - obviously, they are not allowed to provide for any rates discount or waiver - and that has worked. The second thing is citizen engagement. What we did was remind citizens that it is their public realm. In those locations, they put together events, occasions and promotions to bring people back into their towns. Next week is Dine Out in Limerick, the following week is Fashion Week and the following week is Outdoor Cinema Night. It aims to reacquaint people with their civic space. The third thing we did was implement street auditing - street standards and safety. Retailers and all the stakeholders come together, sign a statute of behaviour and say they will keep a town or city clean and get behind all these promotions and that together they will succeed.

That brings us up to today. In recent weeks, we have proposed to the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government the establishment of a town centre management academy. I am not being adversarial but we feel that local authorities, which have been very giving and supportive through the County and City Managers Association initiatives, need to be retrained away from sewerage, roads and infrastructure towards Don Nugent's approach - what Dundrum does in this scenario. It is pleasing that we have agreed a strategic relationship with the Association of Town and City Management, ATCM, in the UK which has been doing these things for 21 years. With that, I will hand over to my colleague, Martin Blackwell, to explain.