Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will get straight to the point. I welcome my colleagues from Roscommon County Council. Mr. Hynes talked about incentives. Providing money is one incentive to encourage regeneration, be it for footpaths or to make a town look well, but private property is owned by someone. Is Mr. Hynes talking about providing tax incentives to encourage people to live in certain areas? That was the model used by Seán Lemass many years ago in the case of Shannon Airport. It was also the mode used in the case of Knock airport in Mr. Hynes' county. Is he talking about the provision of similar incentives to encourage people to move back to the middle of towns?

My second question is for all of the delegates. I knew Ms McConnell in a previous life in Galway through her work in the planning process. At the planning end, there might have been five pubs in a town, two of which are now closed. Efforts might be made to turn them into something else without having to jump through all of the hoops in the planning process. I know that legislation was passed to help in that regard. Have its effects yet been felt, or are there still problems in implementing it to make the planning process easier?

What we call change of use is living over the local shop, but I am talking about a situation where someone wants to live where the shop was to be found in order to keep the town alive. Ms Whyte talked about employment opportunities. She is 100% right in that in a lot of places throughout the country, including Boyle, the lack of bed spaces is a problem. For the purposes of tourism, more bed spaces are needed.

Are incentives needed in that sense? They would help kick on and provide employment.

Mr. Hynes spoke about more than 470 towns with 400 or 500 people in them. In many areas where the bigger towns have no housing available, people will rent in the small towns and villages nearby. Creggs and Athleague took part in the Pride of Place competition, which showed how a town can be brought up when a few quid is put into it. That is the nub of the issue. Three new businesses have now opened in Creggs. At the end of the day, private people are the ones who open businesses and provide employment.

I will say one thing to the people from the Department. I do not know whether or not they would agree with this. There are many different funding streams available for politicians and council staff. It is like going through a maze trying to work out when one thing or another is coming. Could we put a calendar together showing the different schemes coming up from January to December? That way, we would know when everything was coming. There are volunteers in many of these towns trying to do their best, aided by their liaisons with councils around the country. Some of these people are working every day and are liaising with councils. They need something like this, starting at the beginning of the year. Either the local representatives or the Department could announce the schemes, after which there might be a window of opportunity of a month or two to apply. Is there something we can do to help communities and councils in that regard? They would then know what was coming in January, what to apply for in February, and so on. It is nearly like an explosion at the moment, and people could miss out on something if two different schemes are announced at the same time. We are hearing that a lot from ordinary people.

Much great work is being done in many areas. We have to provide incentives, such as giving people living in rural Ireland bigger tax breaks, for example.

My last question is for Mr. Hynes and the county managers. Is there a danger that under the 2040 housing strategy, which emphasises larger urban areas, the smaller towns might be left behind when one crunches the numbers on the number of houses allowed in certain areas?