I wish everybody good health for the coming year.

Yesterday I heard a lot of talk about the rural and social development fund. I welcome the sum of €60 million that has been earmarked for rural Ireland. I wish to talk about the area I know best, namely, retailing in rural towns and closed shops. There are three major issues that need to be addressed in that regard, namely, planning, parking charges and rates. The local authorities must start listening. The development of out-of-town shopping centres has been detrimental to rural town centres. Most of them have free parking spaces for up to 500 cars. In the middle of rural towns, however, where family-run businesses are trying to survive, we have parking charges. Planning permission is granted for free parking on the outskirts of towns, but parking charges are imposed in town centres. In England there was a similar situation 15 or 20 years ago when out-of-town centres were built outside cities such as Birmingham, London, Manchester and so forth which decimated the city centres. Now one cannot receive planning permission in England for an out-of-town shopping centre. The government is providing incentives for developments which will rejuvenate town and city centres. We have moved in the opposite direction and been allowing out-of-town shopping centres to be built. I have no problem with the likes of Aldi, Lidl and so forth coming to any town. That said, we must think of the other shopkeepers who have been in a town for a long time. We must also think of town centres. It is terrible to see 15 or 20 closed shops on the main street in towns such as Castlebar because of out-of-town shopping centres. If local authorities are going to continue to grant planning permission for out-of-town centres, the parking charges that apply in town centres should be scrapped because they constitute unfair competition. Parking charges should be abolished in the middle of rural town centres if the local authority grants planning permission for an out-of-town development.

The other issue is commercial rates, on which we have done nothing this since the 1800s, although we did help a number of GAA clubs when issues arose a number of years ago. I have seen countless business people being dragged through the courts on the issue of rates. It must be addressed as we move forward.