I raise the serious issue of dereliction in the town of Drogheda. There are more than a dozen buildings crumbling on the main thoroughfare in the centre of town. An historic building had to have a public safety notice served on it on 7 June. It caused disruption in the town centre for motorists, pedestrians, businesses, etc. The scale of dereliction in Drogheda would suck the life out of any town. People are just at their wits' end with it. The removal of the borough council from Drogheda has taken away any sort of oversight we had. There is a lack of local power and an erosion of services from the town.

When the Tánaiste spoke of dereliction, he listed a lot of schemes. The problem is, and I am saying this genuinely, in Drogheda, the derelict buildings have been derelict for decades and those schemes are not being taken up at all. They are being ignored. I detected - the Tánaiste can correct me if I am wrong - a reluctance to strengthen the Derelict Sites Act 1990. That is what needs to be done when local authority enforcement notices are being completely ignored. The only way to hit them is with severe financial penalties. Is there a reluctance to strengthen the Derelict Sites Act? If so, why? If there is no reluctance, can it be taken seriously enough? Drogheda is a large town and dereliction has sucked the life out of it.

I spoke earlier on this. There is no reluctance to strengthen the Act. I do not believe local authorities have been strong enough in enforcing the Act. That is a view I have. They might argue it takes too long and there are legal issues and so on which can go on forever. There are other ways to refurbish streetscapes and town centres. We also have to think about our town centres, streets and cities of the future because they are going to be different. There will be a bigger mix of residential as well as commercial. The scale of it will be different from the scale of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s when we had large-scale supermarkets in our town centres. All of that is changing. That is probably a more effective route to getting rid of this dereliction.

In my experience, no matter how many Acts we create, legal routes do not get to the promised land early enough. The urban regeneration scheme is the big game-changer. There is €400 million allocated to Cork for the docklands and the Grand Parade but it will take three or four years before that will manifest itself. Meanwhile, there is dereliction around the very areas we need to address.