Ms Mary Rose Burke:

We touched on some of the elements before in terms of the 15-minute city and making sure that people can live in good-quality housing with all the supports they need around them so that they can walk, cycle and use public transport to get around the city in an affordable and accessible way. The shortage of housing in the city centre has an impact on the number of people in the city centre.

When it comes to main streets, there needs to be a local plan because there is no one-size-fits-all solution for what works in terms of regeneration and getting people living in and engaging with the place they are local to. There is no turning back online shopping, however. We live in a digital world enabled by AI, and businesses have to follow the trends of where the customers are. With online shopping, it is very much around filtering down and driving footfall in for things like click-and-collect, where the person can come in and do the interaction around collection or maybe a return if needed. Some of the large retailers have designs in that regard. I do not see the move online changing. What I do see is businesses and local authorities working more closely together around activation of their main streets to attract people in. That is very much around experiential use. We will see a change of use for the experience economy.

In terms of Dublin specifically, we also participate with the policing forum and the night-time economy to make sure we have a vibrant social scene in the city. There is ongoing work around that. At other times, like last weekend, one would not be able to walk around the street with the weight of tourists in the town. Dublin is still doing very well and it is successful in terms of that.