Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Ideally one would like to grow the retail economy to a level that fills the town centre and provides a good living for out-of-town businesses. The difficulty arises when the retail business is not growing at a sufficient rate and when one wants to rebalance it, it becomes a zero sum game. If one wants to bring more people into the town centre, they must change their spending patterns to a certain extent.

I have heard anecdotal evidence recently that all the talk about water charges has had an effect on people's spending patterns. Even though the charge has not yet been applied, people now expect that they will have to budget for water charges. That was the case with the introduction of the property tax also. I would like to hear the delegates express the views of their members on these charges.