Mr. Denis McCarthy:

The pilot scheme was announced 12 months ago and the idea behind it was to bring forward innovative proposals for residents to return to town centres. Waterford County Council got funding of €100,000 and it appointed consultant architects for that purpose for Cappoquin. We have had several meetings with the consultants and with architects from Waterford City and County Council to date. They came up with innovative proposals to modernise a block of properties in the centre of the town to provide modern living in energy efficient houses. It is a unique proposal in the sense they are proposing demolishing them but refitting them to a great extent. They see that as being possible to replicate in several other towns.

At the start of the exercise we recognised that in small towns of our size, the other towns close by are slightly larger, the amount of commercial development in the future will be very limited. Increasingly small towns tend to have one shop, one pharmacy and a few pubs and properties could become residential units. That is the reason we concentrated on residential development rather than moving in a small way towards commercial development, even though the pilot was for residential development only. In conjunction with that report, they have also developed a town plan with proposals for redeveloping the town. That plan will be available at the end of November, which is the date we have for its submission to Government. I am not saying this as a former member of the council but we have had great co-operation from the council for the pilot scheme. We met the council architects on several occasions in addition to the consultants who were appointed.

Senator Coffey mentioned the Agora model, which should be considered for towns. I said in my presentation that it is all good and well to provide residential units but where will we get people to occupy them if we do not have an industry nearby? Tallow, Lismore and Cappoquin are located quite close together in west Waterford but all the people in those towns are leaving to go to Cork or Waterford for jobs. They will live there also because it will not be economic for them to commute. Unless we attract an industry to those three towns in the area, we will probably be at a strong disadvantage in developing the residential side. As Senator Coffey said the Agora example was not IDA driven, rather it was very much locally driven but it should be IDA and Government driven to provide industry. The pilot scheme would be a failure if we do not attract an industry locally. It is essential that happens.

On the RDF application process, the Senator mentioned some people are disappointed and others are happy with the outcome. That is natural. We were very disappointed because we prepared the application in consultation with Waterford County Council. We hired architects to prepare a plan and also a professional writer. It cost us €25,000 to prepare the application but at the end of the day it is €25,000 lost to us. We as a group cannot afford to lose that amount of money to prepare a second application. We are pursuing Waterford County Council to do the application on our behalf the next time. It gives members an idea of the effort we put into preparing it but at the end of the day we got nothing out of it. I know everybody cannot get money but for us it was a severe disappointment, having spent that amount of money on the application. I believe I have covered all the points.