Walk along the main streets of many Irish towns these days and you’ll see empty commercial premises and unoccupied residential terraces. Meanwhile, out-of-town shopping centres are buzzing with people who live in new housing estates that were built during the boom years.
The slow decay of historic streets in rural Irish towns was the core issue discussed at the launch of the Heritage Council’s proposal for a Living Towns tax incentive this week.
The report, which was prepared by the firm of economists Peter Bacon & Associates at a cost of €38,000 excluding VAT, suggests fiscal incentives to breathe new life into these towns – but the debate that followed showed that the problem is far more complex than simply giving tax relief to owners of historic properties.
The chairman of the Heritage Council, archaeologist Conor Newman, suggested that the proposed Living Towns scheme would focus on the "maintenance and refurbishment of existing building stock to preserve the character of towns to keep them socially and economically viable. We need to allow people to realise their pride of place."
The Bacon report outlines how new economic activity generated would recoup the cost of lost tax revenue, which is estimated at €5.8 million a year.
However, Bacon himself admitted that the Living Towns tax incentive would be “a tough sell” to the Department of Finance in these financially constrained times.
“Tax incentives on property don’t sit easily anywhere but the best time to bring in a levy is when little development is going on. A lot of damage was done during the boom years to both the physical and social structures of towns, as well as to heritage buildings themselves. Activity has been displaced to the periphery of towns and while there are exceptions, there has been a notable hollowing out of Irish towns,” said Bacon.
Speaking in a personal capacity, John Moran, the secretary general of the Department of Finance, said we must ask ourselves why many of these historic rural towns aren’t attractive for people to live in.
Mentioning his own rural Irish background and his experience of receiving French government funding for restoring a rural property in France but deciding to live in a city for career reasons, Moran spoke about the population shift to cities that happens worldwide. He said we must think broadly about how to make rural towns more attractive. For example, would the provision of broadband be better than simply giving people incentives to restore historic houses? “We also have to ask questions about whether the taxpayer owns part of a historic building if [some] capital costs are provided for by the tax payer,” he said.
There was general audience consensus that most people now choose to live in semi-detached suburban houses close to crèches, schools and workplaces rather than in 18th- or 19th-century Georgian terraces in rural towns that might be cheap to purchase but expensive to restore and maintain.
Conservation architects would, no doubt, argue that this is precisely why those individuals who wish to live in these properties should be given financial help to do so. Other questions remain as to how to attract commercial activity back into Irish towns when large edge-of-town retail spaces with free parking continue to attract most shoppers?
Co Offaly heritage officer Amanda Pedlow presented a bleak picture of towns such as Daingean in Co Offaly, of which almost half of the main street is unoccupied and the principal businesses are “takeaways and pubs”.
“Older family businesses are dying away. We need to think of new viable commercial uses for these buildings,” said Pedlow. The main streets of towns such as Birr fare better with shops, yet many of the upper levels of these buildings are used as stores rather than for living accommodation.
Businesses such as craft collectives and coffee shops might work for tourism magnets such as Westport and Kinsale, or towns within reasonable commuting distance of large cities, but many rural Irish towns don’t fit into these categories. What does the future hold for them?
Will the Department of Finance look favourably on this carefully timed and detailed report on fiscal incentives for the built heritage in Irish towns? Should lottery funds be used to restore the historic fabric of our towns, as they are in the UK? And who would choose which towns might merit tax incentives and grant schemes to prevent their slow death by neglect? The Heritage Council?
Perhaps it’s time for a lively debate on the future of Irish towns, and to revisit the 2002 National Spatial Strategy to see whether it delivered on its proposals for gateway and hub towns to ensure balanced regional development throughout Ireland.
