Mr. Gareth McMahon:

Monaghan County Council has a similar planning approach whereby it tries to protect the core of towns. It has been quite successful in that regard but came up against significant pressure from corporate entities and received political representations that certain developments would bring jobs or economic activity and should be supported, even though they would be outside the town core and would not support the town core policy. The county council probably arrived at the correct solution 99% of the time and that was to force new developments to come into the town centre. On some occasions, that has worked very well. The challenge lies in finding the correct brownfield site for developing the type of retail outlet that businesses wish to locate on the outskirts of a town. It works very well if the town centre has scope to be developed in that regard. Significant pressure is placed on councils.