Roderic O'Gorman: When will Dublin Central's regeneration begin?

Thank you Count Comhairle, good afternoon Taoiseach. At Cabinet today I understand you approved Robert Watt to head the special-purpose vehicle charged with addressing dereliction in Dublin city centre and his appointment comes a full 18 months after the report of the Dublin City Task Force was published but helpfully it comes 24 hours before you move the writ for the Dublin Central by-election and the task force report proposed a set of ten recommendations, ten big moves for the city and tackling vacancy and dereliction, bringing abandoned sites in the city centre back to productive use is one of those big moves and city council officials have told councillors that the special-purpose vehicle that Robert Watt will head up is going to lead on the vacancy and dereliction work and it will have another role in one of the other recommendations revitalising O'Connell Street in the surrounding areas. So Taoiseach, two of the recommendations are being led by the SPV I want to ask you about some of the other recommendations. What of the recommendation for a total regeneration of social housing complexes in the city centre, giving tenants warmer homes and protecting them from the worst of the next energy crisis? What about the recommendation to deliver better and more localised services for vulnerable populations? And what about the recommendation to provide an additional 1,000 Gardaí across the city centre area? I can't say you're doing nothing about that last recommendation. The Dublin Enquirer has reported that in the 18 months since the report was published, 40 extra Gardaí have been appointed across the two city centre districts. So on that trajectory those additional 1,000 Gardaí will be provided sometime in mid 2063. I've been out canvassing across Dublin Central with our candidate Councillor Janet Horner and the lack of Gardaí presence, that sense that low to mid-level antisocial behaviour is now just tolerated, is prevalent across all communities. The task force report itself sets out that a total of 750 million to 1 billion euro investment, extra investment, is necessary to deliver all 10 big moves. So Taoiseach, as the voters of Dublin Central are putting their attention to the by-election, I have three questions for you. When will the large-scale regeneration of social housing begin? Are you still committed to the additional 1,000 Gardaí and when will that be delivered by? And how much additional spending, and I'm speaking about additional spending Taoiseach, has been provided to date to implement the task forces' 10 recommendations? Thank you Deputy Taoiseach. First of all Deputy, I was out in Dublin Central myself last evening with Councillor John Stevens and a very pleasant evening indeed and good feedback and a lot of issues raised of course on the doorstep. But to say that yes, approval has been given today and in terms of the expected appointment of Robert Watt as CEO and seconded to the Special Purpose Vehicle, I think the Special Purpose Vehicle is a key legal vehicle to ensure the implementation of the task force reports but also the regeneration of the core of Dublin City and particularly the O'Connell Street area more generally because it will have powers, it will have capacity and government will not be found wanting in terms of supporting both housing and provision in the area and there's, as you know, quite a range of properties are in private sector hands at the moment and that's an evolving situation but I would like to have a situation emerge where the state has greater capacity to revitalise key assets in O'Connell Street. GPO in particular, we're doing a lot of investment in Moor Street and the last budget dramatically and significantly expanded the Living in the City initiative where a lot more substantial grants are now available to support living above the shop and supporting mixed-use development. Also we're committed to unlocking underused urban space for housing and enterprise and then pulling everything together on the planning, housing, transport, heritage so that we get a consistent one approach to the development of the city and you know Dublin City Council has begun the task of setting up the Dublin City Task Force Special Purpose Vehicle. The CEO designate is Robert Watt and it's putting staff with the required technical skills for an interim program management unit. All the building blocks essentially are being put in place now to get moving on this and what is a 10-year integrated area strategy for Dublin City Centre to tackle vacancy, to tackle dereliction but to get real change and to transform the situation there. I am confident we can do it and we're very committed to doing it as a government and we believe the GPO will be a major flagship project at the core of Dublin City and there will be various funding streams that will facilitate the objectives both of the task force but of the special purpose vehicle itself and so obviously the getting all of that together in terms of special purpose vehicles one will take is taking a bit of time. In terms of Gardaí we have significantly increased the number of Gardaí, we've continued to do so and recruitment in Temple Moor is very positive. Thanks Taoiseach, you say your government will not be found wanting and you've listed a number of projects there, undoubtedly valuable projects like the Moor Street Regeneration but these were in train years before the Dublin Task Force published its report and the whole idea behind setting up the task force was additionality was needed to move the dial within Dublin City Centre. It was never meant to be a repackaging of stuff we were doing already and you say you've been out canvassing, I'm sure you'll be back again. I think you're going to need better answers for the the people of Dublin Central because you've consistently cited the special purpose vehicle and yes that's important in terms of the regeneration of O'Connell Street and the surrounding areas but the work on Dublin City Council's social housing stock is not being led by the special purpose vehicle and that work particularly as so many of those tenants are suffering from the energy prices crisis right now, that work is not being led by that. Can you give me clarity on who leads that work? It's not as if we're not investing right now as you know. About 132 million from the URDF that's the Urban Development Regeneration Fund has been already been allocated for the north inner city concept area one proposal and that involves a regeneration redevelopment of several areas of the north city that have suffered from dereliction and decline. 60 million of URDF funding has been allocated to the Parnell Square culture quarter project and the 44 million euro project to refurbish the fruit and vegetable market is currently on site. That's outside the core inner city area but it's adjacent to it and I think will be an important driver of regeneration. On policing we have about 3,894 Gardaí assigned in the Dublin metropolitan region supported by 90 Garda reserves 463 Garda staff and the Dublin north central and south central divisions first areas to roll out a new high visibility policing initiative. During the first six months of the rollout increased detection for public order and body-worn cameras are in use across three stations. I know you were against them but they're actually helping with detection and reduction of crime as well.