Ms Giulia Vallone:

Yes. There are a lot of points of learning in answer to Deputy Higgins's contribution. I will speak briefly about what I have learned from the process in Clonakilty. We have already applied for the case study. The Deputy will probably have seen the application for Cobh as well. It is almost like very practical guidance. It is called a visual audit. We need to understand first of all how we might have a big, impactful intervention in what we do rather than, as is said in Ireland, spreading the butter too thin. We need to concentrate on a more compact area and do something that really makes a transformation. The urban regeneration and development fund, URDF, is already teaching us that we need to have transformation. I would start with a visual audit. I could meet the Deputy and go on a walkabout with the residents and councillors to see what is wrong. It would be very easy. Some people, when they live in an area, do not get this, but there can be a lot of disused road signage, bollards and so on at every corner of a town centre that have probably been there for a long time and that do not need to be there any more. Their removal brings with it an interest from the citizen to improve the area. It is a collaboration. While as an architect I could very easily have a vision in the form of a drawing of a town centre, in local authorities, as members will be aware, there are a lot of funding streams and most of them are for roads and sewerage. They are very much for engineering infrastructure. I work in the engineering department of Cork County Council. I am not a county architect but I am a senior architect in that department. I can activate outcomes for communities, including any roads project. Every day there is a local engineer working inside the architectural conservation area, ACA, inside the town centre, but he has the same scope to do that project outside the town centre. The thing is, if I am working with him, I can make the public space out of roads funding. We did that in Clonakilty. We built the streetscape with the drainage funding and built the third phase of the scheme with the OPW funding. I have a list of examples that could be applicable to other towns. It is a collaboration, working together, on a vision-led plan.