Mr. Peter Hynes:

I understand that, but I wanted to see the colour of his eyes. I will talk to him directly about it because the issue is hugely important. Responsibility for delivering on the renewal of smaller towns and villages lies, unequivocally, with local authorities, about which there is no question. We need Departments, agencies and a great many people to be involved with funding, but in the heel of the hunt, it is a matter for the local authorities to deliver. We accept this and absolutely prioritise the matter, although some have it higher on their list of priorities. The position in each county and local authority is different. Priorities vary across local authorities. That is why, as the committee will be aware, they are independent, but we absolutely accept that the responsibility to deliver on the renewal of towns and villages is ours.

The second point I wish to make, about which I will also speak to Senator Coffey directly, is that there is a model in place. We are suggesting there is enough learning and that the scheme will provide further learning. We do not need to look outside the country or at other places as much as we think we might need to do. The CCMA suggests the following elements, which I have included on a slide are essential to the model in place: community engagement at the start which must include everyone in the town or village; a vision or plan, that is, some notion as to where one wants to go, as otherwise it will be haphazard opportunism; and investment, which is related to the point I was making about the description of Westport, which was transformed under the seaside resort scheme. The scheme receives a lot of bad press, which is sometimes deserved, but in the case of Westport, partly because there was a plan before the scheme was put in place, partly because there was engagement with stakeholders and partly because there was a very good town council - I will come to the question about town councils - to oversee it, transformed the town. It is about implementation and leadership given by the local authority. This is a common theme which should come across in all of the submissions made.

I believe Deputy Smyth asked about town councils. It is fairly clear that it is better to have a small number of councils with local representation, local control and local resources than if that is spread. Having said that, we had three town councils. We have 30 towns that are of magnitude. Deputy Fitzmaurice talked about towns with a population of less than 500. We have 800 settlements with a population of more than 250, each of which is important. The flip side of the town council amalgamation into the municipal district model is that more towns are getting a fairer share of the cake and places such as Newport and Mulrany in our case - there are others throughout the country - are doing far better than they would have done in the old system and I think that is recognised. There are balances in it.

On setting up a central agency or a centre of excellence, there was a centre of excellence under the National Building Agency, NBA, back in the 1980s. It dealt with urban design and its first CEO was Derek Tynan. That worked very well for some time. I am not sure why it moved on. There is certainly a case to be made for having a centre of shared knowledge and shared expertise. We suggested in the presentation that that should reside in a public body or a Department. There are pros and cons over which Department it might sit in. The learning from this scheme might influence where it might sit. I would strongly argue that a base level of skills is required in each local authority to be able to deliver for all of those 400 or 800 settlements. Whether it is located in Athlone, Castlebar, Westport or Dublin, the whole of the country cannot be tripping to one place for guidance. They must have the capacity to do some of their own and that is about capacity building.

I am aware of time and I do not want to hog this but I want to deal with some of the questions put. I think I speak for all local authorities in saying that having incentives to guide investment back into the core towns and villages is crucial. I am not from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform but I would guess that with 800 settlements, 400 of them reasonably large, and the kind of investment needed, it will be very hard to find the resources from the public purse. The only other option is some kind of tax-driven private investment scheme. That debate will arise from the findings of the pilot scheme.

On out-of-town shopping, would we do it again? Perhaps we would do it differently. It was not all about planning. Many small towns and villages just cannot accommodate the size of unit that consumers are demanding. In some towns we have been successful in keeping that focus in the centre of town and in others less so. The move to online shopping will change all that radically anyway. Perhaps in the not-too-distant future, we will be looking to repurpose edge-of-town, big-box shopping outlets because of where Amazon, Google and the drone world have taken us. That may be a question for another day.

On the question of the arts and creativity, that is an extremely important point that we would all take on board. Not all cheap space is bad space. Sometimes it is an advantage to have space that is slightly less used and slightly less in demand because it can accommodate fringe activities and it can accommodate an arts and creativity aspect to towns and villages, which is really important.

When saying that it is not our responsibility to deal with dereliction, I believe the point being made is that it is not our responsibility to deal with all dereliction and there is a balance. Every local authority has used CPO and derelict sites legislation to facilitate either private development or to build our own developments, much of it housing. However, we cannot have the core of every town and village dominated by public housing; it just will not work. It is about balance and I think that was the point being made rather than shirking any responsibility.

On incentives, we will need to use grants, subsidies, supports, which are and will be limited, or tax breaks to try to incentivise private development. I believe Senator Hopkins talked about confidence. Confidence is a big part of it which is why we talked about changing the narrative. If we could get a "Grand Designs" or Dermot Bannon-type programme around living in small towns which actually shows how good it is and can be, then I think that narrative might start to change. It has worked. One hears about Clonakilty, Kinsale and other places, but it is a 20-year programme and this is a very important step in it. We could go on for a very long time because it is a very big priority for local authorities.

I will allow others to make some contributions.