Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I must go next door for 1.30 p.m. so I apologise for not being able to stay for the rest of the meeting. Changes were made as a result of Covid-19 and they arose because of an unexpected situation. They have given us the opportunity to re-examine this area of public policy, particularly for councillors around the country who deal with the question of street furniture in general. In Ireland we have far too much street furniture and sometimes it is inadvertent, such as it is with junction boxes, bollards and all sorts of things that different sections of each local authority often put in. When it comes to adding street furniture that might animate a space, such as tables, chairs, benches and so on, sometimes local authorities are very conservative. One of the issues the authorities cite for the conservative approach is that national legislation outlines the fees and process for applying to use these kinds of tables and chairs.

I would like us to get to a point where we devolve this function entirely to local authorities. I am not certain why we need national legislation to regulate tables and chairs on streets. If we cannot let local authorities do it, I am not sure what we can let them do. I very much have confidence in them in doing that. In 2014, as chair of the economic committee on Dublin City Council, I dealt with a report on table and chair usage in outside areas. We found that there may be places, particularly in outer suburbs, where we would want to put table and chairs to animate villages because we wanted businesses to thrive but to do it in places like Raheny, Finglas or Ballymun, businesses had to go through the exact same procedure and process as somebody who wanted to do it on Grafton Street. There was no recognition that these were totally different requests. In one case it may have been about retailers taking public space and using it for profit but in the other, such action may form part of a broader push by a community to make villages better.

I appreciate this can be a very contentious issue between retailers, even if it is just about pedestrianisation. It is really not a space in which the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government should be involved. It is a space for local authorities. I say to the Minister that, when it comes to the trajectory of the matter, I would like to see this responsibility completely devolved.

We would have to see some uniform standards, and the points made by Senator Boyhan, including around disability concerns, should be paramount. We must be very careful not to do anything against them. Equally, we must recognise the space we are discussing is public so there should not be a for-profit advantage to be gained for one retailer over another or different forms of competition.

Nevertheless we want to animate our spaces and have a night-time economy. We have very restrictive national legislation that limits a local authority's ability to create an outdoor food court at night. There would have to be a process for an event licence or casual trading licence. This is something I would like to see the local authority doing rather than the Department. I hope it is something we will be able to get to over time.