Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The town centre first policy and concept is very welcome. It is a new departure and we certainly hope it gets the investment it deserves. That is critical to all of this.

Across my constituency, which is mainly in a rural area, we have an awful lot of smaller towns. Sligo town is the largest with approximately 20,000 inhabitants, and yet when one walks through Sligo town, one sees so much dereliction and so many empty shops and pubs and old houses on large streets. They are falling into dereliction. That is the same pattern across all the smaller towns as well.

I have spoken on different occasions to county managers and people in the planning departments in counties Leitrim, Roscommon and Sligo in respect of issues around this. It comes back to the same thing whereby the people who own many of these properties in many of these towns do not own assets; they own liabilities. They have an awful problem in doing anything with them. They cannot get money from a bank or anywhere to put investment into them to turn them into something that will be an asset. They find it very difficult to do anything with them. It is the same in many towns.

I was driving through a small rural town yesterday and noticed that 15 buildings had "For Sale" signs but nobody wants to buy them. That is an issue we must also recognise because if a person bought that place and decided to turn it into something, he or she might go inside to find that the building was probably built more than 100 years ago. The walls are all three feet wide and the rooms are the size of wardrobes. He or she would probably end up having to toss it and start again. That is the dilemma in which people who own these properties find themselves.

Much of the pressure seems to come from local authorities for people to sell the property to a developer who will do something with it that can make a difference. Some of them sit on very small plots of ground and some sit on large plots with large gardens. There are also opportunities to build and do something with the back buildings behind them. There are, therefore, opportunities.

All this is down to creating the correct investment environment for people to be able to do that. I know the Minister recognises and understands that is really one of the key things we need to do here. Yes, it is about getting new footpaths and new lighting and all those things done, but it is also about being able to unlock them in order that, as I say, the people who own these liabilities can in many cases turn them into assets. That is a challenge. Much of what is in this plan is excellent and very good. We need, however, to put some kind of structure in place to assist people and give them that little bit of seed capital or grant aid or something so they can unlock that and turn it into something that will be an asset for the future.

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