Victor Boyhan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank our guests for their presentations. I started my earlier contribution by talking about local and regional ambition and national impact. I acknowledge the amazing input of our guests. They are, dare I say it, members of the permanent Civil Service. They know what is going on and we are fortunate to have people like them at the helm.

There is, however, a disconnect between our guests and the local authorities. There is always a tension with local authority members. Ms Graham spoke in her presentation about engagement in workshops. I am not sure enough of that is going on with the local authority members. We must remember there will always be a healthy tension between the executive of a local authority and its elected members. That healthy tension is a good thing and long may it last. Those members are watchdogs and are holding the executive to account. That is a part of their remit and function. However, they are somehow left out of the picture in terms of information. I wrote to every chief executive today to tell them this meeting was on. I know it was short notice but I asked them to confirm their knowledge and understanding of the situation and whether they had a vacant housing officer or town centre officer. It was pushing it a bit to ask if they had town centre officers because that role has only recently been announced. I had an interesting mix of reactions from some of those chief executives. Some of them said they need more clarification and I ask our guests to take that home with them. We have had a lot of external communication but perhaps we are not as good at internal communication within the local government sector and other State agencies.

I acknowledge the importance and excitement of all of this. It shows a realisation that people can be ambitious for their rural towns and expect to see something happening, with a national input from the Government.

I will return to the article in yesterday's edition of the Irish Examiner, which contained a reference to smart data and how we collect it. We can collect an awful lot of data in respect of utilities. That happens in Scotland and other parts of the UK. I am familiar with how it happens there. We can keep it simple. There are many agencies that feed utilities into properties, be they commercial or residential, and we need to do more work on that. I think the Chair will agree that the committee would be interested in hearing more about that area. We do not necessarily have the expertise but I would like to hear more about that area.

I would like to know that we have fully resourced our local authorities with vacant housing officers and town centre officers. Perhaps within the next few weeks the Departments could come back to the committee confirming those officers are in place. Sometimes we have to chase these things. It is surprising how difficult it is sometimes. I would like to see a list. I made a commitment to the chief executives that I would be back on their tails and looking for this information. I should not have to do that. We, as a committee, should get some reassurance that this is actually happening. I would like our guests to put that on their list of actions.

One of the first things I said earlier related to local authority declarations of vacant properties. Would it be possible for the committee to have a copy of the latest local authority declaration of vacant properties for all 31 local authorities? That would be helpful. We bring to this debate our own knowledge of local government. Most members of this committee have been elected to city or county councils. That would be interesting. The more information we share with one another, the more we can understand. We can then monitor progress. Our guests might address those few issues.

I will wrap up by saying this is very positive news. There will be issues and challenges from time to time, but the will and ambition are there and people are excited. The only possible setback may, in time, be resources, but we got a clear commitment today that resources will not be an issue. I again thank our guests for participating in this informative and interesting meeting.