Project aims to breathe life into historic city streets

A scheme to lure business people to redevelop historic city streets has been extended to Cork, Galway, Kilkenny, and Dublin.

Last year the idea was piloted in Limerick and Waterford offering reliefs to regenerate Georgian streets that had been left dilapidated. The expanded scheme will cover all properties built before 1915 and, according to Finance minister Michael Noonan, it will help to breathe new life into commercial districts.

The plan envisages that refurbished properties will allow families to move into the city centres.

Mr Noonan said his decision to roll it out to four more areas was based on a cost-benefit analysis of last year’s measures.

The analysis prepared by Indecon consultants said the scheme was expected to generate 144 jobs in the first two cities and up to 900 in the others.

The initiative came along with separate measure to help builders and tradespeople to set up again after more than 15 months of unemployment. The start your own business scheme will give those who open up unlimited companies a window where they will not have to pay income tax.

However UCC economist Declan Jordan said that tax incentives were not the key to getting people to start businesses. “There are more barriers to setting up a business than tax.

“Tax incentives are not going to address the cultural and structural barrier to entrepreneurship.”