Victor Boyhan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Labour Party for tabling this important and timely motion. It is using its Private Members' time. We have had much discussion about this matter. There are four members of the Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage here. The committee completed a very substantial work on urban regeneration in May 2022. To be fair to all the Members here, they played a very active part in that. There was unanimity among us. We all live in villages, towns or cities. Senator Cummins is fiercely committed and has majored on this in terms of Waterford, and rightly so. Waterford, as Senator McDowell said, is a beautiful city, not least because of its medieval quarter, yet it has vast potential for people to live in it. In Athy, a town I know very well, there are parts in absolute dereliction. This is not altogether an issue for the local authority; it also has to do with some of the owners, absentee landlords and various others. Dún Laoghaire, which was one of the finest commercial towns in the country, has much dereliction and is experiencing the same problems. Therefore, there are multifaceted and complex issues. These entail determining who owns buildings, whether those owners can be contacted and whether they are prepared to engage meaningfully.

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy O'Donnell. I acknowledge that he, too, is fiercely committed. He has his own challenges in Limerick city and some of the towns and villages on its perimeter. He is tasked with and challenged with addressing the issues of planning and local government, and he is very experienced in this area and knows a lot about it. As a starting point, I ask him to examine the report and its 26 recommendations. There is consensus among those of all parties and none on these recommendations. One of them is that the Revenue Commissioners be assigned responsibility for the collection of a derelict sites levy, to be ring-fenced to meet local authorities' legal costs and establish a one-stop shop for refurbishment. It is recommended that local authorities be adequately resourced to enable them to effectively administer and collect a vacant site levy. Clearly, however, this has not happened to the extent we would like. Therefore, there are challenges, including in respect of vacant site officers. City and county councillors have a major role to play as they know the territory very well and feed a lot of the information to the local authorities, as do Deputies and Senators.

We all want to see the necklace of villages, towns and cities linked up. They all have unique architectural qualities and some have the constraint of being in architectural conservation areas. Many have protected structures. I welcome the support of the Minister of State's Department in the form of funding for protected structures. It is not enough but clearly we have many other priorities. There is a desperate need for cash in the health service, we have issues with childcare, there are pupils who cannot get schools, and there are children in school buildings that have water pouring in. I acknowledge there are many demands on the Exchequer but, if we are to address housing, we must reinvigorate and rejuvenate our villages and towns. We have got to get people living in them. We need living cities, towns and villages.

This brings me to my constant request for the rural housing guidelines. While there is a place for one-off rural housing, which the Minister of State understands, he seems somewhat constrained in publishing his draft guidelines. I call on him again to do so. If we make our rural towns and villages attractive, we will encourage people to live in them, such that they will be near their farmland or rural enterprise. There is a balance to be stuck. While we have got to do up our towns and villages, get people living in them and prioritise addressing dereliction through very attractive tax breaks, we must also realise that towns will not survive without commerce, business, enterprise, employment, funding and all the things that go towards making up a vibrant rural economy. I want to support rural communities. There is a balance to be struck in that people may, by necessity, have to live on one-off sites. That must be addressed, clearly with the caveat that there are environmental issues concerning sewage, water and all the other things. Many would choose to live in rural towns like Kilcullen, Athy, Monasterevin and Portarlington, which are very attractive places to live, but they need the support.

I commend the Labour Party on this motion, which I believe is timely, but let us not pass a motion here today, walk out and do nothing. We need to see a timeline and a definite commitment. I look forward to hearing about this. I ask the Minister of State to mention, in wrapping up, the joint committee's report and recommendations and determine whether we can at least track the delivery on some of the key asks, which are important and have broad political support in both Houses.