And to be fair, Meath County Council are undergoing a study on that right now.

Yeah.

We're, we're currently undergoing or preparing a, a retail strategy for the county, and one of the, the main aims of it is to look at, look, how do we tackle, uh, retail and commercial vacancy? What, what do we need to do? Part of, in preparation of the strategy, it involved extensive baseline analysis, but also, uh, consultation and engagement with, with relevant retail groups, stakeholders, and the general public.

And what we were finding was that people were really interested in experiential-type retail, that the, the, the old traditional bricks and mortar retail maybe wasn't enough anymore, that there needed to be something else brought in with it.

And it's about a, a variety and a diversity of retail in our town centers that you do, as, as you mentioned, create that dwell time and footfall, whereby people, if it's an attractive environment, if there's something else on offer, people will stay longer, they'll, they'll, they'll shop more, they'll, they'll spend more.

So it's to try and identify, whether it's a policy, objectives, or interventions, as to how do we encourage that? How do we bring vacant properties back into use? Um, and it's a critical component of the health of a, of a, of a town or a re- of a, a village core is that retail offering and, and how do we now move forward and, and ensure that we can bring those vacant units back into use and, and create a healthy retail environment?

Yeah

... it's, and you only really understand, uh, constraints, issues, opportunities, et cetera, by talking to the people.