Ms Alison Harvey:

First, there needs to be a third way based on that public participation, which CTCHC programme has at its core. That is why we are taking the time to work with these people and set up the projects. That is probably why we have such a long waiting list of more than 45 towns. To move that forward, in the 2019 Town Centre First policy we recommended that we need to scale up that CTCHC programme so that everybody can work together in collaboration and get the stuff done that needs to be done. As I said earlier, the vacancy rates at the moment are really high.

The second thing is to look at Scotland's Towns Partnership to see whether a model like that would be useful in Ireland. Certainly they have been very good in supporting what we are trying to do with the CTCHC programme. The programme that we run was set up at the start because the private sector came to us and asked would we help. In my professional opinion regeneration cannot be done alone by the public authorities. It has to have the private sector. We have to bring them in. We need to look at ways to do that efficiently and effectively.