Dr. Oliver Kinnane:

There are people much more qualified to talk about vacancy than I am.

My colleagues at the UCD centre for Irish towns study vacancy and the reasons for it, especially in town situations. One of the obvious reasons is that the nature of our planning and development has historically been on the edge of towns and cities, as opposed to within them. We certainly need to move to a model of compact growth within urban development areas linked to transportation systems and to stop the spread of our urban growth on the edge of towns.

As Mr. Barry outlined, that will have considerable benefits from a climate perspective. It cuts down the need for private transportation. It cuts down the amount of operational emissions related to transportation. Ireland is quite unique in that 42% of our 2 million homes are detached buildings. That means from an energy and building-envelope perspective we have four walls and a roof to treat rather than two walls in the case of a mid-terrace development or one wall in the case of an apartment development. There are considerable benefits in a number of categories if we plan better and stop sprawling development.

We need to incentivise people to move back into urban centres - towns, in particular - and to renovate vacant properties within towns. We need to make centres of towns more attractive. We need to make urban environments easier to live in for people who are willing to live on main street.