Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Google has probably listened to the discussion and already pre-booked. I will be subjected to a barrage of ads.

I thank the witnesses for their contributions. This is an area of pivotal importance. In the discussion of the divide between rural Ireland and urban Ireland, people are often pitched at the two opposite ends of the scale. People are told their two options are Dublin 4 or a cottage in Connemara. The reality is that 780,000 people live in towns of between 6,000 and 25,000 people. The population living in those medium-sized urban environments is greater than our four regional cities combined. Take the population of Cork, Galway, Waterford and Limerick, add them together and 780,000 is not reached. I live in one of those towns myself, Tramore, which has approximately 12,000 people. We have Dungarvan, with a population in or around 10,000, and then there are the smaller ones such as Dunmore East, Cappoquin, Lismore, Villierstown and so on. It is a false dichotomy when we project it as there only being this very rural environment or this very urban environment. Most people either live in one of those medium-sized towns and villages or are supported by them, that is, that is where they go to for their services, for their shopping, for the butchers, for mass on a Sunday, for the local club or for the school run. It is so important we get it right.

I wish to reflect on how this became national policy with a short potted history. We looked at the Scottish example first, where they have done an excellent job. I cannot over-emphasise the role of the Heritage Council and wish to give a special mention to Alison Harvey, who took a lot of those learnings from the Scottish example and brought them in through the collaborative town centre health check. It has been an outstanding example of how to achieve really meaningful community involvement that is very different from a tick-box exercise we often see when we are doing community participation.

It is actually really from the ground up and very much place-based. It is a brilliant example and now we are feeding it through to a national example. How has that process tracked from the collaborative town centre health check where one is dealing with a smaller number of projects? Will Mr. Doyle tell us if there is still a waiting list of communities that want to participate in that or has that process been mothballed now we have moved into a more formal process? We might come back to that. What are the witnesses' views on the lessons learned under the collaborative town centre health check and whether those lessons have really been learned at a Government policy level? Is that mapped through?

On heritage-led regeneration, I will be at the opening of the Garter Lane centre on O'Connell Street right in the heart of Waterford city on Friday. It is an absolutely fantastic heritage building. A good shot of money has gone into it now and is making the building fit for purpose for another 50 years at least. It really anchors the cultural quarter in that part of the city.

People very often do not necessarily understand their reasons for dwelling in a particular place. We have had the discussion around parking, which does become a hugely emotive issue. People actually do not like to dwell on the side of busy streets, especially if there is car traffic. Consider the centre of Waterford city where it has been largely pedestrianised. This has now become a place where people like to stay. Heritage is a huge part of that but it is also place-making. We need to get more. Mr. Doyle talked about some of the competencies that we are beginning to fold into our local authorities now. I believe that through active travel there is the opportunity for more expertise in place-making. Maybe that is a part we have not quite reached just yet.

I want to touch base on the experience with the town regeneration officers and how successful that has been. We have 26 officers in place now. In my county it is Richie Walsh, who is a past master of community engagement. He is working very closely with the community in Portlaw and has reached out to other communities as well. These guys are new in their roles. We are lucky in Waterford that a very experienced person stepped into it and had a huge wealth of knowledge and experience he could bring to the role. I suspect that is not the case across the board, however.

I am very happy to hear from Mr. Tiernan on how successful his local authority's public participation network, PPN, has been. Again, I wonder if that is a similar experience across the board. I have had involvement with PPNs and one aspect is that they are very underpowered. It sounds like Roscommon County Council has a very good relationship with its PPN and is giving it a pathway for its ideas to become reality. I am not sure this is the experience nationwide. Unless a PPN is facilitated by its local authority then it is not clear to me what is the pathway for a good idea to emerge from a PPN network. It could be the case that people are pushing water uphill with their local authority and not being facilitated by it. I would like to see measures around participative budgeting, for example, to really get buy-in.

We spoke about the idea of building social capital. That is hugely important. Success breeds success. Any of the really successful community groups that I know of started with a really small win. Perhaps they received €6,000 for something, maybe for painting a facade or something like that. Then they asked, "Okay, what is the next thing?" A lot of the projects that fall by the wayside are the people who put in an application for €100,000 on the first go. They just do not have the community skills to pull off that level of an application. That is really important.

Deputy Ó Laoghaire referred to above-the-shop living. It is a difficult nut to crack but it is pivotal. We must get that right. There is a school of thought out there to just rezone the ground floor and make that residential as well but then one loses a lot of vibrancy on the street if everything is just the front door of a house. The traditional model in our town square of having a retail element where people can gather creates a buzz.

I shall refer to another example in the west of County Waterford with the Blackwater economic development zone. It had a combination of a lot of these elements and these positives. Four buildings were brought into use in Cappoquin, Lismore, Villierstown and Tallow. It was connected up and it was really ambitious to take such a punt on this kind of working space and to be able to pull that off in a rural environment. All four of them now are tenanted. Three of them are in old heritage buildings. I am thinking in particular of the post office in Cappoquin. I am not sure anything else would have been able to bring that out of dereliction and back into the centre of the community. It is very positive.

I shall distil these points into specific questions. How has the experience been for the town regeneration officers? How has the initiative been with regard to buy-in? Are we really getting to the people we need to get to in the community? What is the sense of how the Heritage Council's collaborative town centre health check model has tracked into what we are seeing now in the town teams? From a local authority point of view can we have some comment on empowering the PPNs and a comment on the need to empower local government? Reference was made to co-funding models and borrowing. I believe a lot of that is down to the fact that local authorities are underfunded and underpowered in making decisions themselves locally. Perhaps the witnesses would comment on that. Will the Department officials respond first?