Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein)
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161. To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the estimated cost of establishing a living town and city taskforce within his Department focused on increasing footfall to towns and cities and to ensure that a greater holistic experience is provided in order to encourage more persons to spend more time and money locally. [28850/22]

Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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The Retail Forum, which I chair, provides a platform for structured engagement with the retail sector.

The Retail Forum is supporting the implementation of the Town Centre First (TCF) policy and the Night-time Economy, and has established a dedicated Retail Forum Working Group on these matters.

This Working Group are considering practical actions to support town development in collaboration with the TCF National Office in partnership with the Department of Rural and Community Development, the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage and others; and will examine the types of interventions required for later retail opening.

“Town Centre First - A Policy Approach for Irish Towns” represents a major new policy that aims to tackle vacancy, combat dereliction and breathe new life into our town centres. It contains 33 actions which will give our towns the tools and resources they need to become more viable and attractive places in which to live, work, socialise and run a business.

The policy recognises that the needs of each town are different and acknowledges that a “one size fits all” approach will not deliver the outcomes wanted. The policy sets out a framework to facilitate and resource each town to chart their own future through a tailored plan, developed by a collaborative Town Team, and supported by their Local Authority.

It is underpinned by significant levels of public investment spread across major Government schemes such as the Rural Regeneration and Development Fund (RRDF), the Urban Regeneration and Development Fund (URDF), Croí Conaithe (Towns) Fund and the Town and Village Renewal Scheme.

The policy will assist each town, through a Town Team supported by the Local Authority, to design, develop and implement a plan to make their towns more vibrant and attractive places to live and work. This could include the development of accessible and safe public spaces in the respective towns. The regeneration of our public spaces is identified as a key opportunity in the Town Centre First Policy.

A National Town Centre First Office will drive the delivery of many of the recommendations outlined in the policy and support the co-ordinated roll-out of the policy by local authorities, Town Regeneration Officers, and Town Teams.

Departments for Housing, Local Government and Heritage and for Rural and Community Development have agreed the structure and funding for the National Implementation Office and the Town Regeneration Officers with local authorities. The first step is the recruitment of the head of the National Implementation Office, which will be finalised shortly, and the recruitment of Town Regeneration Officers will follow on from this in the coming weeks.

The Town Centre First policy falls under the remit of my colleagues Darragh O’Brien T.D., Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage and Heather Humphreys T.D., Minister for Rural and Community Development.

Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein)
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162. To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the current and capital funding, respectively, that is provided to each group (details supplied) in 2022, in tabular form. [28851/22]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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Funding to the offices in question under my remit is all by way of Current expenditure and is set out in the table below. It should be noted that funding with respect to the Data Protection Commissioner was formally from the Dept of Justice Vote and the Commission now has its own separate Vote.

Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein)
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163. To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the estimated cost of introducing a new public holiday. [28894/22]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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From next year the Government is introducing a new permanent public holiday in celebration of Imbolc/St. Brigid’s day. This will be the first Monday in every February, except where St. Brigid’s day, the 1st day of February, happens to fall on a Friday, in which case that Friday 1st February will be a public holiday. The Government wants to ensure that the public holiday provides for a long weekend. The first St. Brigid’s day public holiday will be Monday 6th February 2023.

This will raise the public holidays in Ireland to 10, bringing us more into line with other member states where the numbers range from 8 to 15 days. While there are costs involved, there is no compensation for employers for any public holidays. However, there are many benefits to the economy, as an additional public holiday helps to stimulate spending throughout the country, particularly in businesses operating in the tourism, entertainment, recreation, and hospitality sectors.

Due to lack of data, it is not possible to generate a historical estimate for the impact of a one-off public holiday using Irish data. Previous analysis by the UK Office for National Statistics estimated the economic impact of an additional one-off public holiday would reduce annual gross national income by between 0.3% and 0.4%. The Department of Finance projects Modified Gross National Income of €242 billion in 2022. Based on the above data, the cost of introducing a new public holiday would be in the region of €0.7 billion to €1 billion. This estimate is of limited value however given the range of variables.

In terms of costs to employers, in practice not all sectors will be equally impacted by a bank holiday – for example, the accommodation and food services sector may experience a rise in activity during a bank holiday, similarly a selection of retailers may choose to continue to operate during a bank holiday. As well as the economic cost of an additional public holiday, there are also positive aspects including benefits of leisure from an additional day off for many, as well as any further community and societal benefits.