Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Living City initiative is only seven months in operation after getting the clearance from the European Union to which the Deputy refers. There are seven applications in Dublin, one in Cork, none in Limerick, six in Waterford, two in Kilkenny and two in Galway.

I presume when various tax advisers and professional groups in these cities learn more about the scheme, the take-up will be even more significant, because it has been in place such a short time - since last May.

On the issue of extending the scheme, I thought about doing that before the budget. However, there are many reasons for the decline of rural towns and we need a package of measures to revitalise them. Tax-breaks alone will not revitalise them. Unless a town has an economic base, a tax-break will not drive people into it, unless perhaps we go back to the type of tax-breaks that allow an investor to develop a building in a town and apply the tax-break deriving from that development to rental income from investments elsewhere. That crossover was one of the seeds of the Celtic tiger. In that situation a developer could build houses on the upper Shannon and not occupy them but could write off the cost of construction against rental income in Dublin city, for example. He or she could also then sell his or her tax credits to another developer if he or she had not enough tax to cover them. That created a kind of market.

I agree on the particular problem identified by the Deputy and, God willing and if we are all back here after the general election, I would like to work with him to see whether we could come up with a more broad-based solution. There is a problem, but there are few policy initiatives targeted to remediate it.

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