Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Jan O'Sullivan. I welcome the Bill and thank Senators Paul Coghlan, Maurice Cummins and Denis Landy for their presentation. We on this side of the House have always found a most courteous reception when we table Private Members' Bills, and I thank them for that. The least we can do is to reciprocate their courtesy and kindness to us. I welcome the Government's Private Members' Bill. Maybe such Bills should be more frequent. We would be delighted to participate.

The Bill breaks down in two segments. There is the transport cost problem and the property prices problem. I hope that when the Minister of State introduces her own legislation she looks again at our Bill, the Upward Only Rent (Clauses and Reviews) Bill 2013, which is No. 40 on the Order Paper, because much of this problem would solve itself if rents in urban areas fell. We all regret that we have had to deal with the recession. Everybody on both sides of this House has had to cope with the matters arising from rescuing banks and all sorts of other occurrences which have reduced consumer expenditure. I worry about what property right was inherent in the court's decision to allow upward-only rent renewals because, even within a half-mile or a mile of this House, one can see all the empty shops that this has led to.

I visited Tralee on Tuesday of last week and was shocked at the number of empty shops there. My host said I should have visited six months ago because ten or 12 shops have opened since then in Tralee. At least business is starting to pick up again, which is good news. Senator Byrne mentioned Ballina and I agree with him on how busy it is. One of the ways of attracting people into the centre of that town is the Jackie Clarke museum, which is a new initiative. Those involved in town centres should think of ways to get people to come in and give them reasons. In Navan, two things are combined - the car-parking area is close to where the traditional town centre was.

I wonder about the difficulties we will encounter. As for filling stations on the periphery of towns, a certain number of grocery stores have moved out there and I do not know whether such business will ever go back into towns. Can one see petrol pumps being set up in the main streets? These and related businesses have naturally moved outside. The Cork city park-and-ride system is an interesting way of trying to get motorists to leave cars outside but come into the town centre themselves, and there are substantial successes in areas such as the English Market. The same operates in Belfast.

I note the proposals to open up 10% of bus routes to new entrants. Waterford, Senator Cummins's constituency, is one of the places where that will be implemented in the strongest way because it already has independent bus companies. If one can get people in by public transport, maybe they can revive the shops that Senator Paul Coghlan and I wish to see doing well.

In the Minister of State's Department, there was a Living Over the Shop initiative to get people into towns. It seemed a relatively cheap way of doing so. I have not heard much of it of late, but perhaps when the Minister of State is introducing her own Bill we might see how that is doing. There may be persons in their late teens and early 20s who want to live in town, without gardens, suburban responsibilities, etc. Can we do more on derelict sites themselves? The upward-only rent review measures should be looked at.

Can we reform transport? I wonder whether in towns where there are no bus services park-and-ride systems should be exempt from any kind of restriction by the National Transport Authority. If anybody wants to set up such a system, it would get people into towns.

Some of the problems with which Senator Paul Coghlan's Bill deals are inevitable. Land prices are cheaper outside towns than in them. That is how Aldi and Lidl have been able to acquire those sites. Presumably there were development levies that went with that, but it is an economic reality. Whether the section of the Bill under which a price is charged for parking outside the town based on the charge inside the town would be allowed to operate or would be an infringement of those persons' property rights would have to be considered.

The rationale for commercial rates must be looked at. We have moved away from it in the domestic model. No poor law valuations are used anymore; it is a market valuation. Maybe that is a direction in which the Minister of State might be moving in her own valuation.

What do town centres do if we reduce the cost of parking and somebody parks all day and buys nothing? Do we need a different regime for short-term and long-term parking in those circumstances? I am with Senator Paul Coghlan, but I am merely wondering. In fact, some shopkeeper might say that a guy had parked outside his shop all day and nobody else could get in there because he had gone off somewhere else - for instance, he had got the train to Dublin - and that this had been a cost to him or her. That is an aspect that must be considered.

Of course, in the wider macroeconomic context, it would be difficult to exempt town centres from what has happened to the entire economy, such as the massive decline in the retail sales index and the massive emigration of young people who might have been living in some of those towns. That is why the House must always come together to ensure that what happened to us in 2008 and subsequently is never allowed to happen again. One cannot take so many people and so much purchasing power out of an economy and not have the signs of it all around.

In addition to this initiative, on which I wish Senator Paul Coghlan well, in all such initiatives, such as ways in which town centres can attract people back in - sometimes without their cars - through park-and-ride bus systems and the Living Over the Shop scheme, we are at one with Senator and the Minister of State in what can be done, because some of our towns look quite down-at-heel and intervention is urgently needed. I compliment Senators Paul Coghlan, Cummins and Landy on their introduction of the Bill.