Rural Schemes Dail Éireann — 2026-05-21 ============================================================ Rory Hearne (SD), Dublin North-West Is fadhb an-mhór iad na tithe folmha agus tréigthe, agus na foirgnimh thréigthe freisin, i mbailte agus sráidbhailte ar fud na tíre. The State has failed, from Spiddal to Fermoy to Carrick-on-Suir and Loughrea. When driving around the country, I see so many derelict buildings. It is scandalous. It is such a shame for these towns, many of which I have visited. I visit relatives down the country and see this. Dereliction is still visible. The town centre first policy is clearly not working. The policies are not working to address this at the scale needed and to deal with the extent of it. It is just not enough. We still see massive levels of dereliction in villages and towns. This affects many commercial buildings. We in the Social Democrats believe that there needs to be things like compulsory sales orders. These buildings cannot be left for decades. --- 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/dail/2026-05-21/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:58+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-05-21