Recently we learned that the chapel at Fort St Elmo is to be restored. This building forms part of one of Malta's most important heritage sites (assuming that, with regard to heritage sites, it is appropriate to make judgments on the relative importance of different sites).
Over the last decades, this chapel has been used by companies and individuals to build carnival floats. These obviously did not receive the news well as no alternative site has been proposed for the continuation of their activity. On the other hand, there were those that favoured such a decision as the restoration of a heritage site is in itself a positive thing.
I would not like to venture into the issue as to whether the building should become a place of worship once again, as it is irrelevant to this page. What is relevant to this page is the economic impact of this restoration. One may argue that it may have a positive impact on the tourism product; but even in this area, we may be treading dangerous ground. What does strike me in the story of the chapel at Fort St Elmo is the restoration work itself.
We constantly hear about the importance of the construction sector to the Maltese economy. However, we also know about the pollution emitted by this sector. We also hear about the fact that nowadays the actual building of houses, flats or offices tends to provide little direct employment to the Maltese as such activity tends to attract mainly non-Maltese. On the other hand, restoration work is certainly less polluting and is highly dependent on the work of skilled tradesmen. The story of this chapel is in itself a reminder that there is a great deal of restoration work that needs to be done in this country.
This is where the aspect of the economic impact becomes relevant. We need to start questioning what is the more economically sound policy in this country. Should we continue constructing new buildings? Or should we restore, renovate, refurbish existing buildings? Every town and village has a number of vacant buildings. The reason why there exist so many vacant houses in this country are various and certainly include the previous rent laws. However, we need to appreciate one point - it still pays more financially to construct new buildings than to repair old ones.
On the other hand, we do not appreciate enough the impact of such restoration work. It uses less resources than the building industry. Our stone is a finite resource and there is not much of it left.
To those who say that one can replace local stone with cement bricks, I would answer that the production of cement bricks is highly dependent on imported raw materials and therefore represents a leakage to our economy. Restoration work in its various forms has higher economic value added than the construction of new buildings and therefore should generate more tax revenues for government.
Moreover, the restoration of existing buildings is likely to give a new lease of life to the area where they are situated, namely the core village and town centres, which in turn generates further economic activity and further tax revenues.
This is what has happened in other countries and this is what has happened in the few areas in Malta where such restoration work has taken place. We are missing one thing to stimulate such a development - a coherent and comprehensive policy on the issue.
The moral of the story of this little chapel at St Elmo is that we need to recognise that there is an economic future for the construction sector in this country but it does not necessarily need to be in the construction of new buildings.