John McGahon (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Today in Clanbrassil Street in Dundalk, I attended a wonderful event, the opening of Creative Spark's downtown hub. In a nutshell, this means that between 40 and 50 remote working spaces in the centre of Dundalk town will be open to people to come and use. I raise this issue because funding for the hub came from the Border enterprise development fund. One of the stipulations is that the funding must be used to target vacant or derelict buildings in an urban centre.

Retail is not what it was 20 or 30 years ago. It has now moved online and there are so many different ways to do it. We have to reimagine the main streets in our urban centres across the country. We can do this by getting footfall back on to main streets through developments such as the one I visited today. Every day, between 40 and 50 people will come to the main street in Dundalk where they will buy breakfast, lunch or meat on their way home. This is about getting footfall back on the streets. The way in which retail has moved to online purchase means that it may no longer be able to do this. While funding is available through the Department of Rural and Community Development for villages and rural areas to turn these spaces into remote working hubs, there is still no clear line of funding to do this in our urban centres. Dundalk, where I come from, was lucky because it is in a Border area but what about urban centres in the midlands, the west or further down the country? This is an incredible way to transform our main streets, breathe life back into them and get people back on to them. It is should be commended and looked at on a much wider scale.

I pay particular tribute to Sarah Daly and Ciara Breen in Dundalk who have put so much effort into getting this hub over the line. It is directly across from my constituency office so I have had the joy of spending the past two years watching it come to fruition. It is open today and people will be working in it tomorrow. This is the key to revitalising our main streets and urban centres right across this country.