Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein)

We know and appreciate that some advances are happening in many of these areas and that is very welcome. We are still in a situation where we do not have people living in these areas. I appreciate that derelict site notices are up and that is a help. It is the big stick with which to beat people to try to force them to do something. However, there need to be more initiatives on the other side to create some kind of fund to assist people to try to do something with many of these properties, or at least a system to move them on to somebody else who will do something with them. As I said, in many cases they have been laying derelict for decades and nothing is going to happen to them unless there is some initiative to make something happen. A big part of that is having a carrot to provide some kind of funding to assist people in that manner.

The Minister of State mentioned that more money is being rolled out and there is going to be a review of how this money has been spent up to now and what positives have come from it. That is welcome because these things need to be reviewed. Of course, there are people in many of these towns who have complaints and objections. They feel that a lot of the parking has been taken away and that there are an awful lot of other issues in this. All that needs to be weighed up because there needs to be balance as well. We also need to look not just at the town centres but at the back lands, as it were, of towns. There are sometimes opportunities behind some of these houses to create spaces and access for people, particularly people who need to live in those areas.

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