Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Using Kilmallock as an example, some parts of Kilmallock are 14th century, depending on which section of the town one looks at. The older part of the town is 14th century and up to the 1700s or more. My job as a public representative is to get people back into the towns and villages even if there are historical monuments. Some of these historical monument designations are now being brought into houses under the listing of the local authorities, for example where a ceiling in a house is listed. From the point of view of me getting investors into a town or village, consider the situation where a whole town or village is saying that everything is a monument or historical. Then we will get nobody to come back into our historical streets where people had lived, and where we want people to live now. I am afraid that this will put on another layer, and slow down the redevelopment of historical towns. There has to be a cut-off point with regard to what is a historical monument. The post office in Kilmallock was a historical monument. It has been brought back into use and now the credit union is there. It has retained its old state and it is fantastic to see it being reused. There are other places within the town, however, where people were trying to move into them and could not get insurance in one part of the house, and the cost of doing up the listed part of the house far outweighed putting on a new extension to the back of it, where the historical face could have been kept along with the roof structure. I am afraid that a whole town or village could be listed as a monument and we would have towns going derelict. Is my concern an overreach, or is this something that could happen?