Lorraine Clifford-Lee (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I add my voice to the calls by Senator Lisa Chambers in regard to the maternity restrictions. We need urgent clarification from the HSE and the Minister for Health in this regard.I have also been inundated with calls from women and their partners in recent weeks. They are highly distressed at the lack of uniformity throughout the country. It is a postcode lottery, as Senator Chambers said. It is completely unacceptable. Today is a positive day with many services opening up in the country. Maternity services need to be prioritised.

I want to discuss an issue relating to the Covid-19 pandemic and how it has utterly transformed how we live and work. Demand for office space and commercial retail units has changed. This will become more apparent as we continue to open up our economy in the coming months. It will continue to evolve as we adjust to our new way of living, working, shopping and socialising.

We all know that we are in the midst of a housing crisis. Building targets are not being met and demand for housing is growing by the day. We need radical and imaginative thinking on several fronts to meet this extraordinary challenge. There are derelict buildings in our city centres. They are all over every city in Ireland. They have been there for so long that they almost become unnoticeable. There are buildings in bad repair and others that are underutilised. The pandemic has caused a vacancy rate in commercial premises that will not recover without intervention. Businesses in city centre areas rely on footfall. Now that footfall from offices will be reduced on a long-term basis, Government needs to make a concerted effort to replace this footfall.

There is a real opportunity now for the Government to apply some radical thinking and reimagine our city centre spaces. Tied into this reimagining is a different use for the buildings in our city centres. We need to provide homes for people in these now-vacant commercial premises. The living city initiative was launched in 2015. This is a tax incentive to encourage redevelopment in existing buildings in Waterford, Cork, Limerick, Dublin, Kilkenny and Galway to bring life back into these cities. The scheme is due to expire in December 2022. I call on the Minister to extend the scheme beyond this date and extend the remit. We need to be bold and reimagine a fresh way of living for our cities and historic buildings. What we have been doing has been unsustainable on so many fronts. Now, we have the opportunity to redesign. That is my call today. I call on the Minister for Finance to make a real commitment in respect of the living city initiative.