Debate contribution: Belfast City Centre Dereliction

Debate contribution by Mr Matthew O'Toole on 18 November 2024.

MLA

Mr Matthew O'Toole

Party at the time

Social Democratic and Labour Party

Date

18 November 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Opposition Business

Heading

Belfast City Centre Dereliction

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4656699

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I beg to move

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I hope that people will see today as a robust and productive Opposition day, when we have put accountability on the record but also dealt with substantive policy issues. In our final motion of the day, the question that we will debate is not simply a local Belfast issue but something that affects the whole region, because our major city is a key economic and cultural driver of this region. None of us should be relaxed about the state of Belfast city centre. A gateway project to revitalise the north-east quarter of Belfast city centre was first proposed 25 years ago, in 1999. Shockingly, not only has that part of the city — specifically, what is now known as the Tribeca Quarter or district — not been revitalised but it has fallen into the most appalling disrepair. There has been enormous improvement in what is now known as the Cathedral Quarter. In our hospitality and cultural offering, it is the go-to part of the city for visitors, but, right in the middle of it, there is a blot that stretches from Royal Avenue to St Anne's Cathedral. If you walk around there — I am sure that Members have done so, given that the issue does not just affect Members who represent the city of Belfast but is relevant to our entire region — you will see dereliction, antisocial behaviour and broken glass. You will see some of the most historic buildings in Ireland falling progressively into disrepair. It is obviously and self-evidently an eyesore, but it is not just that. It is robbing us of rates that we might have if productive businesses or houses were there and even from the properties that are there at the minute. Answers to questions that I asked of LPS have highlighted a shocking level of rates that has been forgone or given to the owners of those properties via reliefs that should not have been due. We have lost millions of pounds in rates revenue. What is happening with this site? We simply do not know, is the honest answer. I do not want to spend all of this brief debate talking about the intentions or wishes of the current owners of the Tribeca site, because, frankly, I think that a little too much energy has been wasted on that already. I want to have a constructive and clear conversation about where we go from here, because it is simply not acceptable for us to allow such dereliction in the middle of the major city of this region to continue. It is not acceptable, and I do not believe that it would be accepted in any other major city on these islands. Can you imagine if this were the case in Dublin, London, Manchester or Glasgow? Of course, there is dereliction in those cities, but it is not to this extent and not in a such a strategically important place. What do we do about it? Our motion calls for a number of things. It calls for the Minister of Finance to start to "address city centre dereliction" not just in Belfast and at the Tribeca site but throughout the region. It affects other places. We want to look at a:

"vacant land tax to discourage long-term landbanking",

and, my God, we have a problem with landbanking. We also want a specific look at how we can revitalise and make use of the extraordinary opportunity of that part of the city. We are in the Northern Ireland Assembly now, but this Building is but a boy compared with the Assembly Rooms in the middle of the Cathedral Quarter. It is rich in radical history, including that of the dissenting Presbyterian tradition of 18th-century Belfast. We are allowing it to literally and shamefully fall into ruin. This is not in our motion, but, today, we have put forward a specific proposal. I am happy for the Minister to explain to me why she thinks it is not a goer, as long as she and her colleagues are thinking about an alternative. We think that you could look at financial transactions capital (FTC). We in the Finance Committee are always shaking our heads about how much of that we give back. We have given back more than £300 million of financial transactions capital in the past half a dozen years. It is not grant funding and cannot simply be given to build a railway or a school; it has to go to an entity that is capable of completing a financial transaction. Why not look at a Laganside-style corporation, perhaps with commercial involvement, that could use unspent financial transactions capital to vest that site, which is now known as Tribeca, get it into proper hands and make use of it commercially, culturally and historically in order to properly celebrate the Enlightenment history of that part of the city, get rid of the dereliction, move on and turn the page on decades of shameful dereliction in that part of the Cathedral Quarter?

It is time for us to take action. I hope that the Minister will do so with her colleagues in Belfast City Council, and I commend the motion. Let us finally get on and do something about this blot that is in the middle of our city.

893 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 11:32 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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