Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I welcome this Government policy and acknowledge the work that both the Minister of State, Deputy Burke, and the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, have put into this policy to deliver it, and to do so quickly. I also acknowledge the role of my Green Party colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, in this. In all the years I have known the Minister of State in his work as a councillor in Kilkenny, he has always pushed this town centre first ideal, based on the Scottish town centre first policy. He worked hard during our programme for Government negotiations to get it in there. I am delighted to see it and a commitment in the programme for Government delivered in a timely manner.

The Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage met recently, to which Deputy Ó Broin referred. Deputy Gould was also at those meetings. We had a series of three meetings on urban and rural regeneration. Over the course of those nine hours of meetings, there was significant engagement from all the committee members, because this is an issue that affects every constituency. Every Deputy and Senator has a view on this and wants to address it and see towns become liveable, vibrant places again.

During the course of those meetings, we had experts and practitioners in, such as architects, researchers and academics - people who were working at the coalface of trying to improve our towns - local authorities and planners. I look forward to that committee report. I hope we will have it ready within a couple of weeks. I would like to bring it to the floor of the Oireachtas to debate because that is something that is available. We had cross-party support at committee and I hope all Members across the House would support me in bringing that report here. Town centre first policy would support many of the views and much of what we heard at the committee meetings as reflected in many of the recommendations that go into the report.

I am especially impressed with the work of the Heritage Council. It is fair to mention the tremendous work Ms Alison Harvey has done on a limited budget. One of the best things we could do would be to clone her and set her out on all the towns. The collaborative town centre health check is critical to how a town develops. It is in that very word - collaborative. It brings all those stakeholders together. It does not become a plan that is led by the chamber, the local authority, the planners or one or two interest groups. It is collaborative. It brings every stakeholder together, such as the voluntary groups, and has input from everybody. The health check programme has very much benefited those towns because it provides the baseline of evidence, so that when you want to proceed with certain works, you have the evidence and stakeholder engagement.

I will read from the submission from the Heritage Council to that Oireachtas committee because it points out the value of the collaborative town centre health check programme. The reason the Heritage Council says it is successful is because, "It is a data driven programme, which is evidence based and creates scientific baseline datasets capturing economic, spatial, commercial, social and cultural activities." We need to capture all of those different facets of our town. The submission goes on to say, "The process creates spatial data, a GeoHive, which in turn supports the implementation of UN Sustainable Development Goals", and "It supports creation of data for EU funding streams". We need to have this evidence base to draw on all the funding streams. The submission further states, "It results in the creation of local regeneration ‘engines’". It revitalises all those voluntary community and other groups that have their towns at heart. These are people who live in the towns, are proud of them, have grown up there, moved there and are bringing their children up there, who want to be part of it, see their town thrive, and want it to be a nice place to live.

To fund that, we must crack the issue of dereliction and vacancy. It is something that is tangible to everybody. Going through any town in Ireland, vacancy and dereliction jump out and are obvious. On Tuesday, I briefed Members on the vacancy, dereliction and regeneration Bill I produced. That Bill proposes to introduce dereliction and vacancy taxes, which will be key. We make it a tax, rather than a levy.

Our local authorities have not been active enough in addressing dereliction and getting sites onto their derelict sites register and following up with the levy. We saw figures for 2020 of approximately €5.5 million imposed in dereliction levies but less than 10% of that being collected. We have an issue there. If we make it a tax and get Revenue to deal with it, we have that income stream. People react much quicker to a Revenue envelope dropping in the door than they do to a local authority envelope. It will also address vacancy. We have up to 180,000 vacant homes and premises throughout Ireland, so this is key to it as well.

It is critically important we reallocate space for people in the towns as well and that we take those brave decisions to remove parking and restrict the car dominance that has happened in our towns. We need to flip the balance on the proportion of town streets in Ireland given to cars compared with those given to children, elderly people or those walking or cycling. I challenge any town in this country to trial pedestrianisation such as what Mr. Simon Wall did in Westport when he was starting off. It was trialled, there was opposition, people said it would not work, but it did work. That is the value of having a county architect, someone who has that vision to pull all the different strands together and make it work.

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