Mark Duffy (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Cummins, to the Chamber. Vacancy and dereliction have been a scourge in every town and village in the country. While I welcome this Bill in many of its parts, we need action on the measures that are in place at the moment. From my perspective there are a number of different issues. One is local authorities sitting on land banks without initiative, imagination or creativity about reactivating it. Good work is being done in different areas but there are also brownfield sites that are owned by local authorities and buildings that are not activated by local authorities. If they do not have a plan or imagination, they need to look for expressions of interest from the private market to create proposals for quality developments that can complement a town centre.We also need to look at incentives. The living cities initiative is a tax measure that is already in place. Can that be expanded to all towns and villages as opposed to just cities? I believe it would not require too much but it would help to unlock some private market investment and stimulate some development.

There are other good schemes such as the repair and leasing scheme, RLS, and indeed the croí cónaithe towns and villages scheme, which was initially introduced only for urban areas with a population of 600 or more. As a councillor I was vocal in campaigning and got support right across the council to extend that to all areas of the countryside. When we go canvassing in general elections we see the sites being cleared. From a point of view of the environment and the social fabric, it is heartening to see buildings reactivated that already have services available to them. There is also the carbon embodiment of those buildings. That is a no-brainer. However, not enough is being done. I see wealthy families sometimes sitting on properties. People who have money can afford to incur small penalties and they sit on properties that could easily be reactivated and brought back into use.

There are also semi-State bodies sitting on land holdings and land banks. We need to devolve authority into local authorities or at least encourage mechanisms within local authorities to bring more life and light back into vacancy and dereliction throughout the country. In every town we see instances of activation of a commercial unit on the ground floor but there are often two or three levels above that and there needs to be a use-it-or-lose-it approach to support that. However, I welcome the work on it and the continued engagement with the House here. I look forward to working to tackle this challenge.