Vacant Properties
Seanad Éireann — 2026-04-15
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Malcolm Noonan (GP), Agricultural Panel

We spoke here before during the introduction of our vacancy and dereliction Bill, and thankfully, some of the measures - quite a lot of the measures - outlined in our cross-party Bill have been adopted. I welcome the introduction of the grant schemes in the Department for living above the shop. It is something I feel very strongly about as I travel around the country and see the potential and the lights off in so many above-shop premises in our villages, towns and cities.
This grant scheme also adds to a suite of measures and supports for the renovation and restoration of older and historic buildings in our villages, towns and city centres. There is no doubt in my mind that these measures should have been embedded from the start in housing policy. They should have been core to it, we should have been looking to see what we have and do all in our power to prevent urban sprawl and the loss of good farming land out in the peripheries and into the countryside.
The Government put a timed delay on our cross-party group vacancy and dereliction Bill and a similar Bill ,which had been brought forward by the Green Party when we were in government, but I appreciate many of these measures have been introduced and it is very welcome to see that happen. We do not care who brings them in; I said that to the Minister of State the day we were here. They are an essential component that is missing to help animate and scale-up the restoration and renovation of these incredible buildings.
A measure that is one of the missing pieces of the jigsaw has been sought for many years by the Irish Green Building Council and the Vacant to Vibrant Building Alliance, which I think the Minister of State might have met, as well as by the architect and conservation profession more generally, namely, the establishment of a one-stop shop in every local authority to help project developers navigate their way through the legislative planning, regulatory and incentive matrix. This would ensure our councils become an enabling force to get these wonderful built heritage elements back into to productive use, to get families back living in our town centres and to help uplift those towns commercially and socially.
Since the establishment of the town centre first principles in 2021, which was based on a Scottish initiative, a suite of new roles has come into our local government system, such as architectural conservation officers, town centre first officers and vacancy officers. However, project proposers often find it tricky, to say the least, to navigate the system and there are varying interpretations from county to county regarding fire and access regulations, sometimes at the behest of the fire officer. Sometimes they have different interpretations of what can and cannot be done to a building. By establishing a network of one-stop-shops across the local government system, we can overcome and develop a consistency of approach and application, share best practice and, importantly, move these projects along.
There is also concern within the sector more widely that there is a shortage of relevant conservation skills, such as joinery, masonry and glazing, but also conservation architects. I am concerned that we may lose vernacular features on older buildings and building fabric that could be saved and, in the case of older shops and buildings, the loss of features such as shopfronts, sash windows, guttering and other features that are intrinsic to Irish town centres. The good grant schemes in the Minister of State's Department like the historic structures fund and built heritage investment schemes help in that regard. There is also a technical guidance document for restoration which was developed by the national built heritage service, which is most welcome.
I ask the Minister of State to give consideration to engaging with the CCMA, LGMA, local authority members and the Heritage Council to see if it is possible for us to establish these one-stop shops. As I said, we have a wide array of supports there and funding mechanisms are now in place but the missing piece of the jigsaw is the establishment of one-stop shops in our local authorities.

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Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-04-15/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:48+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-04-15