Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour)
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402. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government the reason responsibility for the collaborative town centre health check scheme was transferred to the LGMA from the Heritage Council; if a CTCHC will take place for the town of Drogheda in 2023; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [26051/23]

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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The Collaborative Town Centre Health Check (CTCHC) programme was launched in 2016 by the Heritage Council to gather information which would support the regeneration of historic town centres. In 2019 Local Authorities became directly involved in the programme, which has very successfully analysed a number of towns across Ireland in aspects such as land use, vacancy, surveys of businesses and consumers, and a range of other factors.

The success of this programme was one of the contributing factors behind the development of the Town Centre First (TCF) policy, which was formally launched on 4 February 2022. The TCF policy provides a co-ordinated, whole-of-government policy framework to proactively address the decline in the health of towns across Ireland and support measures to aid their regeneration and revitalisation.

In December 2021, twenty-six towns were selected as "pathfinder" towns to deliver Town Centre First plans in 2023. These plans have subsumed the CTCHC programme, with no further projects due to commence under this programme. A Town Centre Toolkit is also being developed to assist in this process, which builds on the work already advanced through the CTCHC programme. Drogheda is not included in this initial list of pathfinder towns.