Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the report and commend my Green Party colleague, Deputy Matthews, who put extraordinary energy and passion into the report. He was ably assisted by his colleagues on the Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage. I welcome the presence of the Minister of State to hear the debate. I recall a conversation with him about two years ago when we were in the programme for Government talks. He might recall that we had a row. We were trying to get the idea of town centres first into the programme for Government. We had a row about whether this was rural or urban regeneration. The truth is that both of us were wrong and both of us were right. Urban and rural regeneration are inexplicably linked. The urban-rural divide is an utterly unhelpful construct that has served neither urban nor rural Ireland. They need each other. We need strong, urban areas that serve our rural areas and vice versa.

Having said all that, we absolutely need to be sensible about how we manage our urban and rural areas. I want to talk about my home city of Limerick and tell a story of Limerick from the last 50 years. It is probably the story of many of our towns and cities. Limerick was a small, compact medieval and Georgian city. Then in the mid-20th century, with the advent of the motor car and the decisions around transport infrastructure and traffic management, we saw the suburbanisation of my home city. Large suburbs such as Castletroy and Annacotty, Dooradoyle, Raheen and Westbury were built at the very edge of the old, historic Limerick city, far enough out that people needed to drive in. They could not walk or cycle and certainly when we did not plan for walking and cycling infrastructure, it made that a difficult way to get back into the city. Uniquely in Limerick, or perhaps also arguable in Waterford - Deputy Ó Cathasaigh might agree - the local authority boundary issue contributed to the suburbanisation of the city.

This proliferation of development at the very edges of our rural areas correlates with the dereliction and decline of our urban areas. The point I am making is that urban sprawl and urban dereliction are two sides of the same coin. They go hand in hand. In Limerick, all is not lost. In parallel with suburbanisation and dereliction it was actively recognised and there were efforts over the last 40 or 50 years, despite the general tide of edge of city development, to stem that tide. I think my colleagues will agree that, despite the bad decisions that have been made, Limerick remains a beautiful city and I think we can improve on it.

The Minister of State came to Limerick last Friday. We in Limerick were very happy that he came. He walked around the city and learned about Limerick and its history. It was a fun day. We climbed the tower of St. Mary's Cathedral. It was the first time in my life I had ever been up there and it will probably be the last. They reserve that privilege for Ministers and their hangers on, as I was last Friday. The Minister of State listened to stakeholders, to An Taisce Limerick, the Thomond Archaeological and Historical Society and to Limerick Civic Trust.

I think we would be dishonest if we said we did not have concerns for Limerick. The challenges that Limerick city centre has are related to the decisions we have made, particularly around transport and traffic management. The dereliction and the treat to the historic medieval and Georgian fabric of Limerick city is linked to those decisions. It is also linked to the boundary issue, as I said, and to the priority the local authority gives to this built fabric. It is linked to the resources the local authority allocates and the approach of the architectural conservation officers, although we have an excellent architectural conservation officer in Limerick. This is connected to vacancy in our cities. Limerick is just like any other urban area in Ireland. We can see the same thing in Dublin, Waterford, Cork, Galway, any of the big towns or any of the villages. The story is not dissimilar.

I want to talk about the national planning framework. It is a really good step in the right direction. The Minister, Deputy Coveney, introduced the national planning framework in 2018. However, I think it misses a few tricks. It refers to compact growth, which is really important, but under the targets for compact growth 50% of the development is to be on greenfield sites. That is a real threat to our urban areas and what we could see if we do not refine and revise the national planning framework in the coming years. We could see further greenfield development, suburbanisation and therefore the decline of both rural and urban Ireland. That is not what any of us wants.

When we are talking about getting people back living in our villages, towns and cities, it is one thing to talk about the number of occupants per square kilometre. We have to talk beyond the numbers and talk about amenities and services and about what is there for the people who are going to live in the centres of our towns, cities and villages.

It is critical that everybody in this country would have access to nature, whether it is on their doorstep, very nearby or within walking or cycling distance. This is how we need to think about urban regeneration across Ireland.

Decisions we make on road space have a direct effect on the vitality of our urban centres. If the street outside your building is hostile, full of cars and noisy and has bad air quality and fast traffic that poses a risk to life and limb, why would you want to live there? Most people would not. What we see, therefore, is a vicious cycle whereby we make decisions that inevitably lead to a lowering of the attractiveness of buildings, including historic ones, in all our towns, villages and cities. We have to turn this around and make brave decisions on traffic management in every urban area because there is a direct correlation between urban decline and how we use space. We need to make it less hostile for people. We need to focus on landscaping and wide footpaths and enable people to walk and cycle around. We need safe, segregated cycle networks so everybody from the age of five and upwards can walk and cycle around his or her village, town or city.

There are several recommendations. Colleagues across the House have gone into the detail of the report. I welcome so much of it. With regard to the vacant homes tax, I certainly support and endorse Deputy McAuliffe's comments. The derelict sites legislation has been in place since 1990. It is really only recently that local authorities have started to take it seriously. My local authority, in Limerick, has done so. It is the leading local authority with respect to compulsorily purchasing homes across the city and county. It is having an effect on improving the vitality of our towns and villages and the city itself.

I welcome the recommendation that stresses the importance of interdisciplinary teams in our local authorities. These are critical if we are to make the right decisions.

An interesting recommendation, No. 3 on page 32, relates to how our use of space and decisions on traffic and transport can have a very serious impact on urban areas. It states: “That the Department engage with the Department of Transport to examine the feasibility of regulating advertisements in the private motor industry.” That is a very interesting recommendation and I certainly endorse it.

Many of those of us on this side of the House who are Green Party members were in Cloughjordan, County Tipperary, at the weekend. It was a fine day and I cycled up from Limerick city. I have been to Cloughjordan many times. It is a beautiful, old town — medieval in many ways — and it is perhaps the exception that proves the rule. It is where Town Centre First has been applied in the past decade or so. Some farsighted people decided that they should settle in the town and this has really led to its regeneration. It is a beautiful town, the exemplar that we should be following. It was an absolutely appropriate place for the Green Party to host its 40th birthday celebration last weekend. If we can apply the thinking that has been applied in Cloughjordan in the past ten or 15 years across all of urban and rural Ireland, we will create a better country.

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