Pa Daly (Kerry, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am glad the Minister brought up the town centre first approach because I see it was in the last programme for Government and it is in the current one. If it was the case there was a priority for town centre first, then the Department of Justice or the Courts Service would not be deciding to close the current courthouse in Tralee and to move it to another side of town without any plan to do anything at all with the building, which is right in the centre of town and has been there since the 1840s.

The current proposal is preposterous in my view. Rather than doing a job like was done in Kilkenny with a budget of €20 million odd for every new courthouse or rather than using an An Post depot that is for sale and refurbishing that or refurbishing the current courthouse, it is planned to close it down and move across to the Denny site, which has been given by the Kerry Group, while limiting any development there and not having any additional benefit to the town. It is not too late to reverse that decision but we will wait and see. I ask the Minister to talk to his colleagues in government about what can be done to do that.

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