Offaly Greens welcome new Town Centre First policy

Offaly Greens have welcomed Friday's launch of the Government's Town Centre First policy. The Green Party has long advocated for a ‘Town Centre First’ approach to support local communities to bring life and vibrancy into towns across the country

Cllr. Mark Hackett, who represents the Edenderry local area, said:

“With the launch of this policy, the Greens in government are delivering on a key Programme for Government commitment to develop a Town Centre First policy, modelled on the scheme developed by the Scottish Government, and informed by the Town Centre Living Initiative pilot project.

“This policy sets out a number of ways in which local communities will be empowered to come up with their own plans to bring life back to their towns. What we’ll see is structures being established and supported at local level, with funding to be provided by central government.

“I’m delighted to see that a Town Regeneration Officer will be appointed to Offaly to help train and support a ‘Town Team’, made up of local stakeholders such as residents, businesses and community groups, to develop a ‘Town Centre First plan for towns like Edenderry, and others and to know that our local authority staff will be on hand to support this work.

“The ‘one-stop-shop approach in Local Authorities will make it easy for businesses and residents to access supports for building adaptations and renovations, and much like Tidy Towns, the awards programme for Town Teams will really help to incentivise people to get on board.”

A Town Centre First approach revitalises and regenerates towns by bringing vacant and derelict buildings back into use and creating new opportunities for unused lands that will encourage more people to live and work within our rural towns and villages. In addition to quality housing and job opportunities, this approach also ensures that good transport links, safe and accessible public spaces, and climate resilience is at the heart of how we plan our towns.

Minister Pippa Hackett added: “This approach gives the people of Offaly an opportunity to shape the future of their towns, and to influence decision making on things like heritage, our public realm, how we plan the towns going forward, how we tackle issues like vacancy and dereliction. From a Green perspective, this also empowers the community to put climate action, sustainable mobility, and regeneration of our public and green spaces at the heart of our Town Centres First plan.

Speaking at the Moate launch of the Town Centre First policy, Green Party Minister of State with responsibility for Heritage and Electoral Reform, Malcolm Noonan stated:

“I’m delighted to launch the Town Centre First policy today with Minister Humphreys and Minister Burke. This is an important step towards empowering our communities to create towns and villages we want to live in and be proud of. Architecturally, culturally and socially, the Irish town is unique in European terms. For far too long, we have turned our backs on this important heritage.”