Carol Nolan (Laois-Offaly, Independent)
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217. To ask the Minister for Rural and Community Development the funding provided by her Department to both Offaly and Laois County Councils from 2019 to date for building acquisition measures to enable the local authorities to purchase buildings that they identified with local groups to convert them into community use; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [26605/24]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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In 2022, in recognition of the urgent need to transform and regenerate town centres I introduced a new Building Acquisition Measure under the umbrella of the Town and Village Renewal Scheme.

This new initiative funded local authorities to immediately acquire derelict or vacant buildings in rural towns and villages. A condition of the funding provided was that the buildings must subsequently be developed as a community facility, thus bringing such buildings back into active use and directly addressing the challenges of vacancy and dereliction.

In the first year of the new measure, total funding of €400,00 was made available to each rural local authority to purchase up to two properties. Having seen the success of this approach, in 2023 I increased the available funding to €500,000 to purchase up to 3 properties.

In 20222, 29 properties were purchased by local authorities using this funding, with a further 24 properties purchased in 2023.

I am happy to confirm that these purchases included a range of strategically important buildings in town centres which for various reasons had fallen out of use. These included old schools, courthouses, banks, and cinemas - buildings which quite often were centrally located in towns and villages, thus exacerbating the impact of their vacancy

In Offaly, funding for the purchase of 3 buildings has been provided to date under the Building Acquisition Measure. In Laois, one property has been purchased using this approach, with a further approved application subsequently withdrawn by the local authority.

Indeed the property purchased in Laois is a very good example of how the Building Acquisition Measure works in conjunction with the range of schemes operated by my Department in that the building purchased in Ballyroan has recently been central to the awarding of €500,000 to develop community facilities under the Town and Village Renewal Scheme allocations which I recently announced.

It should be noted, that the Building Acquistion Measure is not the only avenue for local authorities to address issues of vacancy and dereliction, and schemes such as the Town and Village Renewal Scheme and the Rural Regeneration Development Fund will continue to provide funding in this regard, including via the purchase of vacant and derelict buildings.

I remain committed to ensuring that my Department helps to address issues of town regeneration across rural Ireland, in line with the policy objectives set out in the Town Centre First Policy and Our Rural Future.