James Bannon (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I know. I was canvassing in a by-election in the Duleek area and people there were frustrated that they went out of the city to where houses and apartments had been built but no community services, such as schools, community centres, leisure centres or shops, were provided. People were totally frustrated. It was seriously bad planning.

There has been an over-centralisation by this and previous Governments of services within Dublin city. If we looked at the national spatial strategy overall, it would eliminate many of the bad planning decisions that have taken place over the years. In recent times, the headquarters of Irish Water was located on Foley Street in the city centre. The headquarters of Inland Fisheries Ireland is located here in Dublin as is the administration of SUSI grants and medical cards. Everything is pulled into the city rather than decentralising those services back down to the country to provide for an even spread of people. Within 100 km of this city, three and four bedroom houses can still be bought for less than €30,000. Only two months ago in my own village, six fine houses were sold at a knock-down bargain price of €160,000 for all six. Those properties were built during the boom years. In many counties across the midlands they are pulling down unfinished estates.

Mr. Sheridan referred to overzoning of towns and villages. While that was a serious problem, will the withdrawal of the zoning in those areas now lead to people suing local authorities up and down the country for compensation because what was valued at X euro is now worth less?

A great deal needs to be done if town centres are to survive. There is a significant problem with town centres because bad planning was allowed to take place. Some of the larger stores were allowed to locate on the outskirts of towns and provide free car parking with the result that town centres with expensive car parking were killed off. We need a strategy to bring forward measures to support business growth and job creation in town centres. Many town centres are dying a slow death and we need incentives such as reduced rates in weak town centres. What will further destroy town centres is the abolition of town councils which were there to support the nucleus of towns. They are no longer in place but we will need some sort of town teams going forward to market and develop town centres. We need guidelines for the development of town centres too.

Another issue during the Celtic tiger years was that many heritage sites and buildings were destroyed. We need guidelines built into the legislation to protect sites. On the northside of Dublin as one walks to Croke Park, there was a fine structure of a Methodist church which was hit with a crack of a bulldozer one night. The local authority stopped it, but the next thing a fire developed in it. Now, it is going to be developed.