Mr. Aidan Doyle:

As a designated regional centre of growth under Ireland 2040, Sligo is a city that faces the many challenges experienced by every urban area in Ireland. The economies of regional cities and towns have been undermined by a lack of planning and by underinvestment. This has contributed to the doughnut-type development that is continuing to happen in larger cities like Dublin and is leading to long commutes and suburban sprawl. We want to see this process reversed. The best kind of economic stimulus for towns and cities like Sligo is to have people working and living in the heart of them. The Living City initiative in places such as Cork, Dublin and Limerick aims to protect the Georgian parts of those towns by bringing life back to them. The initiative is a tax incentive scheme for special regeneration areas in Ireland's major cities through which tax relief can be claimed for expenditure on converting residential or commercial properties. We believe that the expansion of the initiative to Sligo and other regional towns and cities, with the extension of the initiative beyond the current May 2020 deadline, will enhance the regeneration of our regional towns and cities and will attract people back to live above shops and restaurants in buildings that are hundreds of years old. According to what we have heard from our members, that is the kind of living people want. The planning problems which make above-the-shop conversions almost impossible need to be fixed. Good local transport services, protected bicycle lanes, decent transport links and proper broadband are also needed. It is much easier to provide such services in town centres than to service mile after mile of new housing and once-off builds. It makes more sense for people to make their homes where we already have schools, water infrastructure, doctors and other government services then to have people driving 50 miles in and out to work each day and trying to serve the spread-out population at the same level.

Businesses in regions like the north west have higher energy costs and a larger carbon footprint. This makes the region less attractive to people who are seeking to set up business. One of the reasons for this is that Sligo is not linked into the gas grid. If we are to enable balanced regional development, attract new industries and allow industries that are already established to be competitive nationally and globally, Sligo and the north west need to have a similar quality of infrastructure to that available to more successful regions. In Sligo, we are working closely with the local authority, the agencies and industry on a compressed natural gas project, transported from the national gas transmission network. This will facilitate the move away from other more polluting fossil fuels, especially oil and diesel.

Without this facility, the region is essentially denied the associated cost savings, CO2 reductions and air quality improvements that CNG transport options provide by replacing diesel fuel for heavy road transport and aiding the transition to a low-carbon economy.

These are just some of the things that local businesses in Ireland are looking make happen, but our planning systems, including our marine planning system, and how we invest in national infrastructure will need to recognise this to facilitate of the kind of progress that we need. Life is for living, and our State organisations should be assisting regional cities and towns across the country, including Sligo, to develop and attract new investment as places where people want to work and live.