Malcolm Noonan (Green Party)

I thank the Leas-Chathaoirleach for letting me in. I am not a member of the committee but I have been following the debate all afternoon and it is really interesting. I have a more general question. I note the Minister has put initiatives in the budget and is finally taking on board some of the recommendations that have been made for many years on tackling vacancy and dereliction. There could also be a fantastic opportunity for our towns, villages and cities from a heritage perspective. The past method was to level out sites and try to infill development while really wonderful buildings already existed on these streets. We could bring about a whole coherence to our town centres about the patterns. We can look at Paddy Shaffrey's old book written in 1975 about Irish towns and see how unique they are in a European context. I would welcome the witnesses' thoughts on that opportunity.

Some local authorities do not have architectural conservation officers. I do not think there are sufficient skills within local authorities to monitor, evaluate and support. One of the elements we talked about was a one-stop-shop as an enabling force rather than something to hold property owners back. If we are to do this in the right way, especially looking at these pre-1919 buildings, the opportunity to do something very spectacular with our towns is there for us but we need a lot of skills. We will need a lot of hand skills, which are the traditional skills, but also conservation-grade architects and ACOs in all the local authorities. In the bigger local authorities, we need significant teams to work with property owners. I welcome any thoughts on that.