Carol Tallon

You know, that people thought that you needed a lift if you were going over several storeys over a retail unit.

And actually that may not be the case.

So,

Actually, we have a data problem, first of all.

But the second thing then is we need to understand when we have the data and we know what's generally underused, we need to understand why and then bring in more bespoke and targeted measures.

But by the way, I do welcome this tax.

I do think it's a good and an important thing, but it's only a very small part of the jigsaw.

Yes, and I'm glad you said accessible as opposed to the value, because actually the value of our grants is quite strong.

The process to be able to avail of them is really poor.

And in fact, this particular one, the derelict property tax, where you're targeting, you know, particularly vacancy over shop units and things like that, there's some really big gaps in how people can engage properly.

in order to avail of a grant so for example at the moment they're only open to individuals whereas actually in villages and towns and many in the city as well these buildings are owned by small business owners and they might be held by a company the company is not in a position to avail of that so these are the kind of things that are foreseeable and that our policy should be addressing but we're just so slow to take we need to we need to almost try every wrong avenue before we can um

see the right avenue and it's a real frustration given the scale of the emergency and the urgency around it.

So actually one of the things we'd like to see moved quickly that is already being mooted and that is an initial feasibility study that would be available to the owner of a building whether it's a company or an individual

to say if it's underused, if it's derelict, why is it so?

And is it viable to bring back in line with current and appropriate building standards and regulations?

And even that initial feasibility, that's something that the government could fund that would move us in the right direction very quickly.

They are, but actually one of the things that the study I referred to there that's been undertaken by UCD, and that's pending peer review and will be available within the next two to three months, hopefully.

One of the things that disclosed, because it actually looked at case studies from around the country where this has been done well, and actually in some cases, there was an overestimation of what was required.

So actually that pushed the viability of the project more than it needed to.

So one of the things that's going to be done to make it helpful for building owners is actually to prepare a pattern book or a set of templates that essentially will become a starting point