Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 8 March 2022
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government
Urban and Rural Regeneration: Discussion (Resumed)
Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail)
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We can look at the examples of applications for any of the villages. There are great schemes relating to empty buildings in the centre of rural towns that are being used as community hubs or for other purposes. I could talk about empty pubs in Finglas village and derelict sites in Ballymun or Santry. Those urban villages all have the same needs and I would argue that they all have the same integrity. I know Ms Graham does not mean it in that sense of the word. There are distinct geographic areas that make up a city. If we are going to be more sustainable and have 15-minute cities, urban villages must increasingly become places where people connect so that people are not travelling into and out of the city all the time and rather are travelling into their local village. Particularly on Town Centre First, are those urban villages eligible for the policy tools I talked about for hubs etc. or is that exclusively for rural towns?