Ms Miriam Delaney:

Our research and ongoing conversations have led us to make several observations to the committee. First, Irish towns are unique. In media and public debate, a dichotomy is often drawn between urban and rural, with the significance of towns overlooked. Towns are not countryside nor are they mini-cities. One Irish person in three lives in a town. We tend to think of towns as centres of tourism but we need to shift the focus to make towns great places to live.

The second observation relates to all Departments and none. Control and decision making about towns fall between too many Departments and Government agencies. Navigating the extraordinary raft of policy that affects towns is a complex and frustrating business. Within these layers of policy there is insufficient holistic focus on towns. This is true of funding too. The various agencies and Departments do not always seem to be aware of what is being funded by whom in towns. There is inadequate communication between the funding awarding bodies on who and what is being funded, with place-specific funding oversight often missing.

Our third observation is that the funding related to towns is often delivered annually on a case-by-case basis. This means significant time and energy is spent tendering small projects rather than coherently putting bigger strategy into action. Community groups face an uphill struggle to navigate complex funding applications to achieve any tangible success. Many community groups lack the skills to know which fund is appropriate for which project or how to successfully apply for funding.

Our fourth observation relates to the evaluation of best practice and knowledge sharing. Funded projects are not always evaluated independently for impact, value and outcomes. Opportunities to share knowledge are, therefore, often missed. This can result in each town starting from scratch rather than building on shared experience. Likewise, there is insufficient awareness of best international practice in town rejuvenation. Moreover, there is no central point to access advice, research, case study projects or best practice models.

The fifth point relates to the lack of long-term vision. The annual funding cycles of local authorities and Departments make meaningful engagement with local communities is difficult. Decisions on funding by local authorities are often rushed towards the end of the calendar year. Money is sometimes spent quickly without reference to any overarching strategy for specific towns.

Community groups need funding but they also need a vision for what their town could be.

There is a lack of support for community stakeholders. We noted that many community and voluntary groups within towns are frustrated by a lack of advice on funding options. Some towns suffer because of weak links with local authority employees and the lack a direct point of contact. The loss of urban and town councils in 2014 has left a gap in grassroots representation and access. Public participation networks and towns teams are attempting to bridge this gap, but are uneven in their successes.

There is a lack of specific funding and taxes to address long-term vacancy. Vacancy in towns is the major issue that needs to be tackled across Government Departments and directly with local authorities. Compact urban settlement, which is at the core of Ireland 2040 and the Climate Action Plan 2019, will only happen in towns if we address vacancy. Adaptive reuse of empty buildings must be actively supported by local authorities. A vacant building tax is also needed to incentivise sale or reuse of long-term empty buildings, which are currently held as capital assets with little or no incentive to release them for sale or reuse. Priority must be given at all levels to new homes within town cores over peripheral sprawl.

Public buildings must be located within town centres. Local authorities and Departments need to take the lead here. We can learn from Scotland’s recent adoption of a town-centre-first principle in locating public services and amenities in towns and prioritising use of existing town centres at every opportunity. New schools and primary healthcare centres must be located in town centres but we see over and over again where this has not happened. We cannot expect others in the private sector to have confidence in towns, unless it is first demonstrated with consistency and ambition by those who are responsible for towns.

Building on our observations, we submit the following six proposals for consideration by this committee. Proposal 1 is for a multi-level town partnership. We need a cross-Departmental partnership with dedicated multi-annual funding to deliver a co-ordinated town-centre-first strategy to towns, that links Departments, local authorities, local communities and stakeholders. Scotland’s towns partnership model could easily be translated to Ireland.

Proposal 2 is for an academic centre of research. The proposed town partnership group should be aligned to an academic centre of excellence, potentially in the newly emerging transdisciplinary UCD centre for Irish towns. The centre would support departmental policy and decision making, and have the resources to identify, research and disseminate best international practice and successes within Ireland.

Proposal 3 is for built exemplars. We believe that community and business groups need to see concrete built examples of town centre housing, of first-class public realm design and of reuse of vacant buildings to build confidence that change is possible. For this we need implementation of clear and accessible, streamlined funding for exemplars.

Proposal 4 is to strengthen the mechanisms through which the voices of citizens in towns can be effectively heard in decision-making. New forms of design processes with effective community engagement are critical in developing holistic plans and strategies that work in the long term. Participatory design and participatory decision-making will need to be supported financially and with more time in developing project briefs.

Proposal 5 sees the need for the appointment of town architects. Architects are trained to provide a vision of what could be but very few towns have a long-term spatial vision. Local authority town architects would be responsible for good design, would provide funding guidance, and would implement public space design and adaptive re-use projects. Towns that are highlighted as successes, such as Westport and Clonakilty, have benefited from committed local authority architects. Some local authorities in Ireland still have no architects. The role of architects and urban designers in town rejuvenation is not sufficiently acknowledged and supported.

Proposal 6 is for each town to have a strategic spatial plan identifying projects and potential funding streams. This plan needs to be developed by local authorities in partnership with community groups to achieve sustainable town development in an era of climate change. These action plans should highlight short, medium and long-term goals for each town and identify appropriate means to fund these goals.

To summarise, we see the need for two levels of reform to maximise the benefit of public funding for towns and villages. The issue is not a lack of funding, but we see a clear need for more cohesion and clarity at national level between Departments and funding agencies, supported by a dedicated academic town research group. Stronger supports for participatory decision-making at grassroots level are also required. The free market project is fundamentally optimistic; we believe that there is real value and potential in our small towns, and that they are resilient places that can provide sustainable communities in the future. Good design should be the connecting tissue of all built projects. Towns need structural reorganisation of funding for greater efficiency but they also, more critically, need a vision of what they could be.

We thank the committee for inviting us to speak. We welcome any questions on our observations and recommendations.