Mary Fitzpatrick (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for attending. This is my first time to speak in the Seanad Chamber. It is a great honour. Before the Minister of State came in, my colleagues very passionately articulated the stress and strain experienced by the hospitality and other sectors owing to the Covid-19 pandemic. I want to use my time to propose what might be part of a solution to a crisis faced by inner-city areas and rural towns. One element of that crisis that the Minister of State and anybody coming to Leinster House this morning will have noticed is the devastating impact of Covid-19 on footfall in Dublin city. The streets of the city and other cities around the country are devoid of human activity. Rural towns such as Strokestown, Ballinrobe and Youghal have far too many vacant commercial properties. Despite our having a new Minister responsible for housing who, to be fair to him, is moving heaven and earth to address the housing crisis, it will take time to make up for the ten years of home building that we have lost.

Covid-19 has had a very damaging impact on housing construction. The housing crisis has not gone away. Our SMEs, independent traders and hospitality sector are suffering greatly. I would like the Government to consider a creative solution to create footfall in inner cities and rural towns, create employment and sustainably redevelop vacant commercial properties. In a nutshell, it is a matter of expanding on the Living City initiative, which was launched in 2015 and applies only to the inner city. The initiative is based on a tax credit that has largely failed to stimulate regeneration and renovation so I would like the Government to consider amending it to turn it into a living city and rural town initiative. Instead of offering a tax credit, there should be a grant payment to property owners to allow them to renovate, regenerate or re-let vacant commercial properties, or to live again in residential properties. It will bring people back into our inner cities and rural towns to live. It will create immediate employment in the construction sector, generate footfall and, as a consequence, support independent SMEs and small traders. It will be a sustainable response.

To be fair to previous Governments, they have invested in this, including through the tax credit. Dublin City Council has a dedicated one-stop shop to provide planning advice, guidance on regulatory conformance and conservation matters. It relaunched the existing Living City initiative in 2018. However, despite the relaunch and further promotion, there have been only 59 applications processed for the entire city. Therefore, the numbers are far too small and the initiative has had too little an impact. When the city council consulted Irish property owners in respect of the initiative prior to their experiencing the negative financial impact of Covid, the feedback it received was that a grant initiative to support property owners to develop properties would be a greater stimulation. The property owners cited the experience in Amsterdam, where there was a grant of €25,000. This led to the conversion of 850 new homes. The Minister of State might ask how we can pay for what I propose. I ask him to examine the allocation of funds in the serviced sites fund. The Government has allocated over €300 million to provide a €50,000 subvention for the building of new affordable homes. The Government should be ambitious about this and create, with some of the funds that will not be used this year because of Covid-19, a grant of €25,000 that could be used for the renovation and reuse of any vacant property for residential purposes in an inner city area or rural town.