Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I wish to share time with Deputies Paul Murphy and Barry.

It is laudable to launch a policy referring to town centres first to address the often unacceptable levels of dereliction and neglect that many of our town centres have suffered from. The town of Dún Laoghaire is the capital of my local authority area. I remember as a teenager that it was a vibrant, buzzing and dynamic town. For decades it has been commonly been referred to, perhaps a little unfairly, as a ghost town compared to what it used to be. That is a tragedy for a town such as Dún Laoghaire, which has an absolute jewel in Dún Laoghaire Harbour. When it was built, it was the biggest human-built harbour in the world. Dún Laoghaire was the location of the first suburban railway in the world. It overlooks Dublin Bay, which was first surveyed by the captain of HMS Bounty, from the famous "Mutiny on the Bounty". The town has an amazing heritage and history, both literary and cultural, but we have rampant dereliction in both the private and public sectors. I will name a few of the derelict sites. Those in public control include Carlisle Pier, from which much of the Irish Diaspora departed. It is effectively derelict and is being used a car park. The Stena terminal building has been derelict for the best part of a decade. The Carnegie Library in Dún Laoghaire has been empty for years. I could mention many more sites such as the old Kelly's Hotel building, the old wash house, the former post office, the further education building on Eblana Avenue and the harbour cottages in Dún Laoghaire Harbour which used to house people. I will not go through the full list.

I had a transition year student in with me the other week. First, she discovered, interestingly, that they have rent controls in Paris, which is something the Government could learn about. As another one of her jobs while she was with me for a week, she spent an hour going up the main street in Dún Laoghaire identifying derelict buildings. In one hour, she identified 33 derelict buildings. That is one every 30 seconds going up Dún Laoghaire main street, just left there to rot. There has been chronic failure. This has been talked about for decades but nothing was done about it. What I worry about is that the Government makes a very laudable plan, ticks all the right boxes, but will anything happen? How many plans have we had of this sort? We have had Rebuilding Ireland and Housing for All. The Children First plan also included the word "first". We have had lots of plans, but are they delivered upon?

It particularly worries me that much of what we are doing in reality belies the plan to renovate, refurbish and revitalise our towns. For example, if Dún Laoghaire town is to be vibrant, it needs decent public transport links. Most of the local public transport bus routes in Dún Laoghaire have been privatised and are now run by Go-Ahead Ireland. I get calls constantly from constituents trying to get to the hospital or to the town stating that the buses have not turned up. Privatisation has been a disaster in terms of public transport links into the capital. Frankly, I doubt there is any real willingness in the Government to address that.

We have had more plans for Dún Laoghaire Harbour than I care to remember. Waves of consultants who have been paid significant amounts of money have totally disregarded the views of the local public, who know exactly what needs to be done in Dún Laoghaire Harbour and Dún Laoghaire. The consultants completely ignore them. They get paid a fortune. They make crazy plans, which, in any event, never come to pass.

I think of some of the derelict sites, such as the old CBS site on Eblana Avenue. We campaigned for years for affordable and public housing on the site on the basis that it would revitalise a central site in Dún Laoghaire. What actually happened was that the site was given to Bartra for 200 co-living apartments, which are, essentially, the modern tenements of the 21st century, rooms that have shared facilities and are only the size of a disability parking space.

It is no good unless we are serious about this. We need to deal with the dereliction by taking over public or private properties and by saying that if there is not a good reason for something to be left derelict for more than six months, we will take it over and provide the resources for it to be refurbished for housing, community amenities, heritage purposes or whatever. Give us the public transport, give us the public housing in our localities, and give funding to the local authority and the local community to deliver on the refurbishment and revitalisation. Then we might have a chance.

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