Joe Flaherty (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank all the speakers. It has been hugely informative. I will probably come at it from a slightly different angle. I am looking at the issues in the context of a very rural and provincial town with a population of 10,000 to 14,000 people. The great thing about those towns is that we have plenty of space in the towns. Many of these towns, historically, have very large and wide streets. We probably have a public that is averse to abandoning their cars and going into town centres. I have two very specific questions, mainly for the witnesses from TU Dublin. Perhaps they could deal with them for me. One question relates to an aspect that we discussed at our last engagement. I am still struggling to get a clear answer or a clear recommendation from the experts on which way we should be going. It concerns provincial towns where retail is obviously in demise and there is a compelling argument that we should get people to move into these houses that were former shop units. Yet, in all the time I have people coming into me looking for housing, I cannot get young couples and young families to put their hand up and say they want to live in a town centre, especially in rural Ireland. They still want that garden and they want that house with the green area. Can the witnesses point me to any place where we have looked at an alternative for those shop units? I am referring in particular to continental Europe. Is there some way to energise the units, be it through artists and artisans?

Have we looked at incentives and - dare I mention it? - tax schemes to cultivate that new alternative fledgling retail within those units? That is one aspect. The second one follows on from it. Where we do active transport in these towns, we do it very well, but then it becomes almost like a sore. It looks really good but it does not link in with anything else in the rest of the town. Could the witnesses point me to some town with a population of between 10,000 and 14,000 where there is a really good workable example? We have invested large sums in our greenways and all of that, which is laudable, but I do not think that gets to the kernel of getting people out and cycling. I come from Longford and there are hundreds of people out cycling on the greenway every Saturday or Sunday but when I am running in the morning, I will see at most three or four people cycling to work. We are not making that transition despite the massive investment in the greenways. Perhaps the Cork Cycling Campaign may wish to come in on that point. How can we cultivate that culture of getting people cycling in these provincial towns?