Mattie McGrath backs outdoor seating but warns on dereliction

Minister Tarrant. Minister Tarrant. Minister Tarrant. Minister Tarrant. I, too, have to give this a cautious welcome. I do welcome the situation as one of the few, the very, very few benefits that came from COVID, the outdoor seating areas, which has been contingent for many years in many towns, especially towns with the licence fee and with the charges and with the costs. I welcome that they are going to be waived by Minister O'Brien as well. We need to put this into proper legislation, but it needs to be done sensitively. Many areas have seen it has worked good, and we need to have it policed properly as well, and tiny towns and other groups and Chambers of Commerce welcome it. But when we have a town around and so many dereliction is right next door to it or beside it, it just does not look right. That is, of course, in many towns. The earlier Speaker, Deputy Daily said about the bigger supermarkets moving out, and that happened in the case of the point that Conmel, the Vale of Honey, the centre of the town is falling down around us, with supermarkets on each corner, and there are no benefits of the town. I actually believe that some of those have sweet deals in planning, and rates, deals and everything else, and the ordinary hard-working business fields of the town, and they did not embrace this as well and fool outside. It is still only the same business, really, so there are extra staff and extra seating, but outside of a fine day you have to go in on a wet day, so it is important that we would try and nourish it. It was raised this morning, and there are questions on the order of business, about the over-shop fronts or under-shop fronts, the dereliction, the spaces there, and the grant aid and supports. We are talking about it for ten years, but it is not happening. The Cree-Conaghan schemes and other schemes like that are, like between the main garden and the West Gate, there are 19 or 20 empty, semi-delic shops, and that is demoralising for the people beside them, who are paying their rates and trying to do business, and people who put outdoor furniture for food outlets and that as well, not so much the pubs. The pubs are struggling anyway, struggling is the word, COVID has wrecked them as bad and the folly that you have going on with them to open the pubs all night. The theatre talks about full employment, and most companies are struggling to get staff, and if you have people in the pubs at five and six in the morning, they are not going to be fit for work or in any state for work. This is just another fancy dream that you have for the capital city, like other capitals in Europe, but it is not good, so we have to give that a very, very wide berth, and also, as I said, this issue with the labelling. Getting back to this piece of legislation, I do welcome it, and I do think that you should look at things in the round, in the streetscape, and the buildings that are there, their addiction. It is not much good having nice R&A chairs and tables, and maybe glass panels around them for shelter, and maybe the overhead cover. When you have a delric building or semi-delric building beside it, and that is continuing like that for decades, and in some cases for maybe recent years, but some of them for decades. We need to look at this in the overall streetscape. We need to look at the bad planning that they did in America and England, and we copied it here, putting all our supermarkets and big chains outside the town centre. It has been a disaster in Clannmill. The Tipperary town is the same, and it is really, really badly affected. We have a lovely town in Cahodownieski, and we have a lot of furniture outside, and I complement the business premises, I complement the wonderful hotel, I complement the tidy towns, and all the different groups that are working to make Clannmill Development Association a welcoming place, and it is. I leave with all the cash flow, since they used investments in the Palace Hotel and the tourist flocking dues, since they visited the Archie of the Royal Family. It has really been marketed well, a good business, a welcoming place, and getting great reviews. But we must not forget the other towns that are not in the privileged situation. As I said, we have to tackle the dereliction of sites that are there, longstanding some of them in the towns, up and down the streets, and try and support the hard-pressed working ratepayers, who pay staff, pay insurance, pay tax, pay light, pay heat, pay everything, and give employment, and continue to do that on a daily basis. They must be supporters, and they are not getting any supports, meaningful supports. I asked before for a task force for the likes of Clannmill, where we have huge abandoned sites, shopping centres, and that was in the middle of the town. We have Aldi come in recently to build up a new premises. They are welcome too. Maybe they would be better off going into the empty super-coin site that the late, great farmer, Ian Shannadour, Fergal Quinn, designed and built, and lifted the town some decades ago, and now it needs to be lifted again. Good morning. Thank you very much.