Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this policy. I also welcome the work of the Minister of State, Deputy Peter Burke, and that of the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien and the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, on the co-ordination and cohesion referred to by Deputy Ó Cathasaigh. That is all very fine though at ministerial level, the difficulty is when it gets down to the ground. The ambition the Government and this House may have for town centre renewal and rural renewal is not being met on the ground.

Deputy Ó Cathasaigh can probably speak to this, but I was intrigued by the recent RTÉ "Prime Time" report about what is happening in Waterford city and the very proactive and aggressive way the local authority is chasing CPOs. That is in contrast to most local authorities, which seem quite lazy and intimidated by law and by lawyers. I will return to the issue later. I saw figures indicating that Waterford City Council acquired 45 properties that were empty or derelict through CPO, got funding from the Department and put them into housing. That is the kind of proactivity we need to see from every local authority, not the usual story about there being a CPO and the council is trying to find the owner or there is a derelict property and the council does not know where the owner is, it does not have any details and it does not want to go to court. We need far more ambition and dare I say, aggression, from local authorities around the country taking on CPOs. It would be worth the Minister of State's while to encapsulate what is going on in Waterford and to set targets for it to be repeated right across the country.

We need this policy. Following a survey, the Northern and Western Regional Assembly has concluded that there are nearly 45,000 empty properties in the west, north west and Border areas. That is an extraordinary figure. The report uses such language as: "The region faces 'catastrophic' economic and population decline unless the trend is reversed." It is nonsense to sit on an asset of 45,000 empty properties while we have a housing and homelessness crisis in the country and given the opportunities we saw in the past two years for remote working and relocating to rural areas. We have all of these national policies and the recent supports announced by the Minister for Housing, Heritage and Local Government yet we need to see them being implemented on the ground. Local authorities need to stop diagnosing the problem but refusing to treat it. As the old phrase goes, there is no sense in having a dog unless he barks or even bites. Local authorities are good are barking about dereliction, but they are not very good at doing much about it, even with the powers they have.

I welcome the notion of a town regeneration officer but what backup and support will they have? One person on his or her own cannot do that. In many communities there is a lack of knowledge and opposition and a downright refusal on the part of the owners of derelict properties.

Town teams are doing some very good work around the country but, again, what kind of backup and support is there?

One of the worst things done by the 2011 to 2016 Government was the abolition of town councils. There is no sense in us talking about town centre first unless we commit to restoring town councils and the element of democracy that went around that. That set towns back enormously. Faced with international decline, with things like online trading, the fact that we in this country have taken away that element of local democracy has deprived our towns of something very important.

It should be town centre first, but not at the cost of the communities around them either. Towns, in particular rural and provincial towns, depend on a healthy community around them and that is the basis on which they work. A healthy town needs a healthy community. I am all for the town centre but I am not going to say town centre first at the cost of rural communities, at the cost of rural families not being able to plan to live in their own rural areas, or at the cost of farm families not being able to live on their farm but being forced to commute 40-mile return trips to attend to their farms and farm animals, because they have to live in the town given the current planning guidelines. Town centre first, but communities first too. Healthy town centres need a healthy community around them. Until we recognise that part, the Minister of State is going to have a very difficult few months ahead of him in terms of the development plans that are coming at him. These are development plans that have the endorsement of locally elected representatives but are then being overturned by unelected people. I am all for town centres, and we have a huge amount of work to do in that regard, but not at the cost of rural communities.

There is huge potential around some of the recent plans announced for the pathfinder towns. I am thrilled to see Killala in County Mayo chosen. The Minister of State was down there with us during the summer, although he did not get a chance to go into the town. There is massive potential in that town, which has a high level of dereliction for such a small town. A focused, cross-Department investment programme can transform its fortunes and can give homes to families who want to live in that area, homes that are already there but are vacant and, in some cases, derelict. It can regenerate the town, given the fine history, the ecclesiastical history, the history of the French-Irish tradition and the use of Killala Bay, Killala Port and Killala Quay around it. All of those together, with people actively and proactively working together, can deliver.

We want to do it in this House and the Minister of State wants to do it in his Department, but it is about getting that into the work programme of our local authorities and getting them to deliver on this and provide whatever supports and powers are needed. As we have seen in Waterford, the powers are there if they want to use them, and I want to re-emphasise that point.

There is a continuing need for ongoing infrastructural investment. To get people to our town centres, we need proper public transport. Things like active travel are working but, once again, I want to use the opportunity to say that for towns like Claremorris in east Mayo, Ballina and Sligo, it would be wonderful if we had rail connections to get people to them along the western rail corridor. We need a proper bus service and a proper public transport service to keep populations moving between towns and within towns. Within our small towns around the country, yes, we encourage living and we are encouraging people to come back into them, but we are not providing public transport that is suitable to towns. We have transport in our cities but in our towns there needs to be a far more proactive local transport policy so people do not need a car to get in and out of local towns and local shopping centres.

It is time to be proactive around how we support local independent retailers. We cannot put up the white flag in the face of online trading. We need to take measures such as taxation measures, investment measures and rates support measures to give local traders the upper hand. The notion of state aid rules meaning we do not defend independent local and rural traders from the might of the major multinationals is wrong. That is not what state aid rules were for. Let us proactively support our town centres by proactively supporting town centre retailers, proactively supporting town centre democracy and proactively supporting town centre transport, but not at the cost of communities that make the town centre the healthy place it needs to be.

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