Áine Collins (Cork North West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

No.

I have had experience of what we have been discussing. Mr. David Fitzsimons kindly came to Charleville and worked with retailers. They set up a town team and the local council provided training. It has had a significant effect and does work. Charleville is a small rural town; it is not the prettiest town in Ireland, even though it has very good architecture. Signage was a major issue. One of the ideas that came from that experience was that towns that did very well in the Tidy Towns competition also did very well in the retail sector. I do not necessarily agree with all the talk about rates because rates need to be paid. I used to run my own business and would rather see money being invested in making towns prettier than rates being cut. We also need to look at signage. We have a great many plastic signs that are very tacky looking and give a bad impression. We have all spoken about retail offerings as being an experience. We need a range of retail offerings in towns; we need to have creches, nice parks and places where one can sit down, coffee shops and places to which one can go for lunch. As I remember from Mr. Fitzsimons's talk, during the week one buys for convenience but at the weekend one buys from experience. One needs to have a range of shops. In the small town in which I live we have a very well known butcher shop which brings a lot of people to the town. We have just spent €80,000 on refurbishing the square and planting new trees. One can see the effect on the town; it does work. That is where we should concentrate our efforts as opposed to discussing taxes. We have to pay taxes, whether it be water charges or property tax or an increase in income tax or some other tax. We should focus on seeing what we can do in towns rather than talking about the things we cannot do.