Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent)
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Certain things cannot be put into legislation and I accept that. I accept this is about valuation and all the rest and cannot be accepted. However, it flags the very serious issue of the large commercial entities. It comes down to the planning decisions to position large commercial entities on the periphery of towns, which are displacing jobs and ruining the viability of town centres. Something needs to happen on that. There will be another opportunity elsewhere to make some changes in that regard. Car parking leads to the big distortion given that a big shopping centre on the periphery of the town offers free parking and typically there is inadequate provision in the town centre. There needs to be a community gain. If these entities are approved, that community gain could be through delivering better car parking arrangements for the areas that are going to be disadvantaged. We are seeing it all over the place. We are very often losing the passive security in a town centre of having shops occupied and we are losing the commercial rates from them as well. There is an issue in that regard, but it may well be for other legislation.