Mr. Denis McCarthy:

We wish to acknowledge and thank the committee for its invitation to us to attend and present today and we are delighted to share our journey and experiences with members. We are here to represent two voluntary community companies, namely, Cappoquin Community Development Company, CCDC, and Cappoquin Regeneration Company, CRC. These are sister companies with the same directors and members. I am joined here by Mr. Ollie Wilkinson, a former Deputy and now a director of both companies. I am a former county manager of Waterford County Council and I am currently director and secretary of both companies. In the Public Gallery is Mr. Tom Feerick, director, and Mr. John McGrath, treasurer of both companies.

I will begin with some details about Cappoquin. Cappoquin is a small town in west Waterford situated on the N72 Dungarvan to Killarney route. It is located 15 km from Dungarvan and 5 km from Lismore. It is almost equidistant from Cork and Waterford cities, at 65 km. It is situated on the River Blackwater where the river takes a 90° bend to the sea at Youghal. The population of Cappoquin town at the time of the 2016 census was 699. The corresponding population of the Cappoquin electoral district was 1,253. This represents a 15% decline in population since 1981, with seven of the eight censuses thereafter recording population declines. Indeed, the current population is at its lowest ever level since the initial formal census in 1821. This persistent pattern of depopulation has led to the inclusion of Cappoquin and its environs as part of the Government CLÁR initiative.

CCDC was established in 1993 so it is now in existence for 26 years. The company has had many achievements since its formation and I attach a copy of these achievements set out in a chronological order. I refer members to four of these achievements: the purchase of six acres for housing development; the construction of six small industrial units for start-up businesses; the construction of Cappoquin community centre at a cost of €3.2 million; and the hosting of the all-island pride of place awards ceremony attended by President McAleese in 2008. The company has four directors, an overall management committee and four sub-committees, namely, finance, childcare, hall and gym, and projects. The management committee of the company meets on the second Wednesday of every month with reports being provided by each of the sub-committees. An annual report with professionally audited accounts is formally presented at each AGM of the company. The turnover of the company in 2018 was €497,000.

In March 2018, CCDC carried out a survey of premises in the town of Cappoquin. This indicated that of the total of 505 premises in the town 86 were vacant, which is 17%, and of these 37 were derelict, at 7%. Most of the derelict premises were concentrated in the centre of the town. We also noted that there were 108 properties for rent in the town which, at 21%, is rather high and does not encourage permanent residents and impacts very much on our ambition to build a sustainable community. Many of the derelict properties in the town centre were formerly commercial with residential over the shop. We further noted that of the 80 or so properties on Main Street, all of which would have had an element of residential at some stage, only three contain families with schoolgoing children and this will be reduced to one in the next school year.

In addition, of the 16 active businesses which remain on the Main Street, only five have active residential occupancy over the business. As a result of this survey and primarily due to the level of dereliction and vacancy, particularly in the centre of the town, Cappoquin Community Development Company, CCDC, decided to establish an additional company to deal directly with this issue. Thus, the Cappoquin Regeneration Company, CRC, was established in March of this year.

The Cappoquin Regeneration Company is now actively working with Waterford City and County Council, WCCC, Waterford Leader Partnership, WLP, and the Tomar Trust to address the issue of vacancy and dereliction in Cappoquin town. The Tomar Trust has assisted us both financially and otherwise in the past. In this matter of vacancy and dereliction, the Tomar Trust has given the company a letter of commitment to provide €1 for every €3 provided by Government up to an amount of €1 million. With this generous commitment in mind we have to make every effort to secure Government funding for our regeneration project.

In conjunction with Waterford City and County Council a report on vacancy and dereliction in Cappoquin was commissioned and prepared by a specialist consultancy, Prescience Business and Management Development Limited in May 2018. This report has listed the following factors as the catalysts for vacancy and dereliction in the town: lack of scale and critical mass; loss of function and purpose; continued population decline; loss of social and economic infrastructure; age dependent population; greater choice of suitable employment elsewhere; poor standard of housing stock; property ownership in too few hands; uneconomic cost of refurbishment of buildings; the bypassing by traffic on the N72 of the urban core of the town; the creation by the N72 of a dislocation between the town centre and the River Blackwater, as well as between the town centre and the social, recreational and sporting activities hosted within the community centre; and no convenient parking available in the urban core.

The principal recommendations of the report on vacancy and dereliction are the redevelopment of strategic sites in the town centre as its symbolic heart and focal point which would maximise visibility for the regeneration initiative, generate interest, appeal and impact which in turn could be expected to radiate to more peripheral locations in the town; improvement of the public realm in the town and providing easy access to the River Blackwater from the town centre with the provision of suitable car parking to support existing and new businesses; and the creation of tourism related projects which would have as a primary objective the capacity to increase visitor dwell-time and expenditure in Cappoquin.

The report concludes that with ambition and attention Cappoquin could reinvent itself in a similar fashion to the towns in the west of Ireland but to do so would require a catalyst of a significant financial investment from public and private funds. As I have said already we have at present the commitment of private funds.

An initial application under the Rural Regeneration Development Fund, RRDF, made by WCCC on behalf of Cappoquin town was unfortunately unsuccessful. It is proposed that when the next call for category 2 funding is announced, a further application will be made.

To date this company has purchased two vacant and derelict properties in the town centre which are visible on the slide before the committee at the moment, has contracts prepared for a third, and is actively pursuing four further properties. Our initial aim is to clean up these properties - make them secure, repair and paint externally - to at least make them presentable. Further refurbishment will have to await the decision of grant applications under the RRDF programme. We have also recently partnered with WLP and five other community groups in adjoining towns in making a joint application for RRDF funding as part of a Blackwater Valley Economic Development Zone. This involves complete refurbishment and conversion to modern offices of one of the vacant and derelict buildings which our company has purchased. This application is currently awaiting a decision.

As the committee is aware, Cappoquin is one of six towns selected by the Government to take part in a pilot programme to develop innovative proposals to encourage more centre-of-town living. Some €100,000 has been provided to WCCC for this purpose. To date a firm of architectural consultants has been appointed to come up with innovative solutions for Cappoquin. We have had several meetings with the consultants and architects from WCCC, draft proposals have been prepared, and these are being finalised at present for submission to Government.

Cappoquin is also subject to an application made by WCCC under the village and urban renewal programme. I am pleased to say that we have received word in the past number of days that this application has been successful and €100,000 has been provided to Waterford County Council for this purpose.

Cappoquin has been in decline for many years. This has been precipitated by the closure of the Cappoquin bacon and chicken factories with a loss of more than 200 jobs. The decline has been further exacerbated by the closure of Mount Melleray and Mercy Convent second level schools, the decline in the congregation of the Cistercian monks in Mount Melleray, the closure of the Convent of Mercy and the closure of the Bank of Ireland and AIB bank branches.

One additional factor which has come out of the survey and discussions is that of suitable local employment. It is clearly evident that the vast majority of students who receive second level education locally and in turn go on to third level education do not return to the locality. The simple reason for this is that there is no suitable local employment for college graduates available in the locality. Thus, we have a very significant brain drain which will also create a very much age-dependent population in the long term. This can only be addressed by the provision of suitable employment in the Cappoquin area. We do have an IDA industrial park just outside the town with a number of good employers but none of these provide employment for third level graduates.

This factor has to be addressed in conjunction with addressing the vacancy and dereliction and residential issues. It is outside our capacity to address the employment issue and we seek the committee's support in also addressing this matter.

As a community company in existence for 26 years and with many achievements to date, the committee can see that we are fully committed to our mission statements. We are now embarking on a very ambitious programme of regeneration in the town. Thus, we ask the committee to provide support by whatever means it can to assist us in achieving our goals. We thank the committee for taking the time to listen to our story and we will answer any questions which it may have and will forward additional details if necessary.