Mr. Keith Rogers:

I completely support what Mr. Graham has just said. I do not see that there is any difference or any preconditions. What we are discussing is a mechanism to support retail until it gets back on its feet. There are several ways that can be done. One is to support a recruitment drive. The State can play a role in that regard and partly fund it.

There has to be an incentive to encourage retailers to expand and fill the vacant spaces around the country. I do not wish to disagree with Deputy Shanahan but there is a great opportunity to partly fix the housing crisis with apartments in every town, village and city, as we see in cities all over the world, through an incentive tax initiative to get landlords to upgrade the upper floors of their buildings. That would pay for itself and it would be a great initiative to get people back into towns. The planning system and the craving to expand retail in the past 30 years has brought new competition outside town centres. Covid has given us an opportunity we did not seek to fix towns and make it more appealing to live in town centres. We have a chance to exploit the current support for local businesses, to help start-ups and to fix a large part of the housing crisis. The opportunity we have currently is the best we have ever had.