City, town and village regeneration must be a priority – Thomas Gould TD
20 March 2025
Sinn Féin spokesperson on Urban Regeneration, Planning, Public Realm and Local Government, Thomas Gould TD, has today called on the government to fully resource the Town Centres First Programme and to bring forward a strategy to reimagine our towns, villages and cities.
His comments come as the GeoDirectories Commercial Vacant Report for Q4 2024 showed that there are more than 30,000 vacant commercial units in our towns, villages and cities.
Teachta Gould said:
“Commercial vacancy is a direct failure of government policy. We want to see vibrant, bustling and safe cities, towns and villages. Decades of government underfunding have instead meant that many of our communities are struggling and the local economy is impacted by this.
“There is a knock-on impact of commercial vacancy. When city, town and village centres aren’t thriving economically, people are less inclined to live in them. This further increases vacancy rate and adds to the decline. It is a vicious cycle that requires targeted intervention from the government to break it.
“When we are looking at places like Sligo where one in every five commercial properties are vacant, there has to be an acknowledgement that current policy is not working.
“Sinn Féin has called for a report on the future of retail, a Derelict Sites Levy that is actually collected and a real policy on meanwhile use. Meanwhile, use could be transformative for many of these areas. It is a well-established practice in other countries and it has huge benefits in regeneration of areas while simultaneously giving social enterprises, small businesses and community groups access to spaces that would be far beyond their means in other circumstances.
“Right now, local authorities have no meaningful policy platform to build meanwhile use initiatives on. It is up to the government to come up with a real plan that could see these buildings brought back into use temporarily and life brought back into our towns and villages especially.
“We need ambitious, creative solutions to deliver thriving, bustling and safe cities, towns and villages.”
The GeoDirectory Commercial Buildings Report Q4 2024 can be read here.
