Blueprint for revitalising Irish towns

Despite the national return to economic growth, unemployment in rural towns and villages remains disproportionately high. A lack of vision and inadequate financial support have led to a prolonged pattern of declining town centres and increasing regional gaps in quality of life.

The Government’s commitment to rural tourism through the imaginative packaging of the Wild Atlantic Way and Ireland’s Ancient East, as well as the recent announcement of a €30 million package to help revitalise rural towns, is very welcome. But how will we get the best bang for these bucks?

The Heritage Council believes that local communities must be actively mobilised and intimately involved in developing a blueprint for revitalising their towns and villages.

The council has a record in this area through its Irish Walled Towns Network and Historic Towns Initiative. Add to this the development of award-winning initiatives such as our village design statements and we can see that significant parts of the jigsaw are in place for the Government’s initiative to be successful, if the money is properly deployed.

A third of Irish people live in towns. Extensive international research and Irish-based studies by the Heritage Council have highlighted the financial and job benefits that arise from the conservation and restoration of historic buildings and the retention of historic streetscapes.

These benefits include not only strengthened tourism and retail sectors, and the increased likelihood of foreign direct investment, but also the general sense of wellbeing that people derive from living in an attractive, healthy environment.

To this end we are proposing the creation of a rural towns and villages network that would operate on the basis of partnership and membership. Its key functions would be to rejuvenate more of Ireland’s town and villages.

Our blueprint for doing this is the Irish Walled Towns Network, established in 2005 and now including 28 towns.

The Heritage Council’s approach in this network has been to work with local communities and to help them with funding, training and guidance. The programme gives grants for medieval-town-wall conservation; provides grants for festivals and heritage interpretation; and offers training, research and self-help documents for communities. The programme has won the most prestigious European heritage prize, the EU’s Europa Nostra Award.

The Heritage Council now wants to expand this tried-and-tested programme from the current 28 towns and villages to at least 40. I am confident that using this model can achieve outstanding results for many more places around the country.

Without their historic buildings and monuments, Ireland’s towns and villages become anywhere places. Medieval town walls, Georgian terraces, and tower houses add distinctiveness to an urban landscape that a nondescript retail park can never match.

Sense of place

These features are also critical to the sense of place that local people feel. And they are vital to each place’s tourism infrastructure. Our plan proposes significant conservation work on prominent monuments and buildings, as well as smaller-scale maintenance of structures on historic streets.

Today’s cultural tourists want authentic experiences, so our programme involves cataloguing all historic and cultural attributes, and developing a plan for protecting and promoting the most interesting venues and activities.

We provide small grants to support heritage interpretation, including signage, murals, inlay paving, audio guides, health and safety compliance for historic buildings, gates, stiles and seating.

Events and festivals are some of the best ways to encourage tourists and locals to visit historic town centres, and this year 48,000 attended events funded by the network throughout the country. A 2009 KPMG report on Youghal’s annual day-long medieval festival estimated its economic benefit to the town at €500,000.

To make a programme like this work, community activists and local authority staff need knowledge to make good decisions.

That’s where our education programme comes in, with five strands running in parallel: conservation, planning, town-centre economy, heritage tourism and community-group development. We run workshops, seminars and conferences, and over the past five years almost 900 people have attended Irish Walled Towns Network conferences and workshops.

We want more people to come to an appreciation of the hidden potential of their towns and villages. Their regeneration is based on appreciating and fulfilling the strengths of their natural and built heritage.

Heritage can act as a real economic driver, and there is an opportunity now to extend the reach of these initiatives to every corner and constituency of rural Ireland. The Heritage Council wants to do more, but it needs additional financial resources and human capacity.

The Irish Walled Towns Network currently operates on meagre resources: an annual budget of €260,000 and one employee. From the €30 million Government fund, the council is currently seeking additional funding of €1.9 million a year.

Our challenge is to get Government – both elected politicians and civil servants – to see the potential in this programme and provide the modest financial support to let it happen.

Solving Our Own Problems: The Carrick-on-Suir Way

In 2014 the Irish Walled Towns Initiatives tried a new approach in developing a town centre plan. It required people in the public, private and community sectors of one town – Carrick-on-Suir – to work together.

Helped by mentors in heritage tourism, planning and architecture, and retail, residents came together over a weekend to analyse the problems of the Co Tipperary town and come up with solutions. The workshops concentrated on what the town could do to help itself.

Five expert mentors had reviewed the local development plan and other relevant documents before the event. Their job was not to come up with the answers but to inspire, guide and encourage actions that came from the people of the town.

This ground-up approach is now driving a range of initiatives by a range of organisations in the town. With the theme of “solving our own problems”, they are working on a town-regeneration plan focused on conserving and enhancing historic monuments and buildings; identifying tourism opportunities; festivals and events; training for the local community; and awards.

Michael Starrett is chief executive of the Heritage Council

On November 5th the Heritage Council hosts a conference in Kilkenny, Ireland's Rural Towns and Villages: Policies and Proposals for the Future