Mr. Laurence Lord:

On behalf of Free Market, I thank the Chairman and members for inviting us to address the committee. I am joined by my colleague, Miriam Delaney. We will briefly describe who we are, make observations on funding for towns and outline our recommendations for actions. Free Market is a group of six architects and designers: Jo Anne Butler, Jeffrey Bolhuis, Miriam Delaney, Tara Kennedy, Orla Murphy and me. We were selected by Culture Ireland, the Arts Council and the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht to represent Ireland at the 2018 Venice architecture biennale. The subject of our exhibition, entitled Free Market, was Irish market towns. We described their character, history and future potential to an international design audience. Our exhibition focused on small towns and especially the market places that are typically central to Irish towns. We sought to highlight the diminishing quality of public spaces in most towns as vehicular transport and car parking have taken priority over all other considerations. The public space and marketplaces of our towns do not exist in isolation; they are a symptom and a product of the overall health and vitality of towns. In light of this our project addressed issues of vacancy, car parking, demographic change, housing and re-use. The research contained drawings, models and photos of a selection of ten Irish towns, describing their past and our proposals for their future.

Between July and September 2019, the Free Market pavilion and exhibition toured four towns, Castleblayney in County Monaghan, Macroom in County Cork, Mountmellick in County Laois, and Kilmallock, County Limerick. The tour focused on learning from small towns. Through a comprehensive public engagement programme, we sought to hear from people who live in towns about their direct experiences. We have engaged in debates, lectures, workshops and festivals all over Ireland. We have met volunteer community groups, business people, schoolchildren, politicians, local authority architects, heritage officers and planners.

The Free Market project began life as an architecture exhibition but has developed into one that considers the connections between politics, planning, decision making and design. We produced a map of the agencies and policies affecting towns in Ireland in an attempt to understand the complexity of decision making impacting towns. It highlights the vast numbers of parties engaged in Irish towns and the raft of policy written about towns. We also attempted to map the funding streams and agencies awarding funding. The diagram on screen is a snapshot of the dynamic funding system for towns. It illustrates the number of agencies involved in distributing and awarding funding.