Timmy Dooley (Fianna Fail)
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That is an issue in every village and town. In Ennis, tremendous work is being done by the State and the local authority in upgrading the public realm. However, the above-the-shop spaces, if you want to use that term, are largely unutilised. We need to find a way to use those spaces. I suspect we will need to do so by offering more supports. The grant scheme that is there at the moment is working well for buildings that might have originally been residential. Those grants of €50,000 or €70,000 are adequate. I would like to hear some suggestions as to how we can get the spaces above shops operational and into the kinds of units that Deputy Bruton talked about. Perhaps the witnesses will not be able to make suggestions now but they could come back to us because that would be a useful way of getting people into accommodation and breathing life back into towns. It would play into the notion that there is no need for people to drive into towns when they live in them. The demand is there.