I'd like to thank my fellow Members for bringing this item to debate. As many here already know, I'm disheartened to see so many historical buildings across Wales being abandoned and then, consequently, torn down and demolished to be replaced by newer, nondescript buildings that do not contribute to the identity of an area. Removing buildings such as former churches and chapels ultimately changes our urban landscape, and, in my mind, is having a negative effect on the way we relate and identify ourselves with the place we live. Moreover, we are losing our tangible connection to our own history. Whilst museums do provide appropriate examples, as we develop our urban areas, we risk eroding the identity of our communities.

Personally, and as has already been said, religious buildings are very much a part of our community, and they have provided a place of security and hope for generations of people through some of the most troubling times of our nation's history. As we remove our places of worship, we are unintentionally signalling that our loss of religiosity is a good thing, which in my mind is a sad state of affairs, because it normalises the view that our spirituality and connection to a higher power are no longer relevant.

In my home village of Llantwit Fardre, the Bethesda Calvinistic Methodist chapel and the green corrugated iron St Andrew's church are now but distant memories. I'll never forget Trinity Calvinistic Methodist chapel and the impact that it had on me when I drove around the corner one day to see the building that had been in my community since 1913 was, without warning to the rest of us in the village, just a pile of bricks on the ground. All of these buildings contributed to the history of my village and shaped it in one way or another, and now I fear that the next generation and people moving into the area will see my home village as just one massive housing estate without a history or distinct identity of its own.

I believe that, whilst communities may have moved away from worshipping in these buildings, and so their original use has faded, we should not be so ready to allow their destruction, because there's no doubt in my mind that communities still want and would welcome them being saved and repurposed, still serving the community in the spirit in which they were built. I would also argue that organisations that own these religious buildings would welcome their reuse rather than their demolition and would be willing to offer their help and services to do so in one way or another. With this in mind, I want to emphasise that as a nation that recognises the importance of the well-being of our communities, we need to do more to help them repurpose these religious and other historic buildings. Recently, I met with a housing association concerning their plans to demolish an old school in my region, and one of the reasons why they're doing this instead of renovating it is because of the building's poor energy efficiency and the lack of financial support to do anything to improve it. Given this and the unprecedented need to build an energy-efficient future, we need to provide a more suitable level of public resource for communities, agencies and religious groups to upgrade the energy efficiency of these buildings and to help them meet decarbonisation targets. 

Finally, as has already been mentioned, I think that given the value of religious buildings to the community and their potential value to tourism, such as pilgrimage routes and historic trails, we should be providing clear evidence and support that communities can repurpose or rejuvenate their religious buildings and enable them to continue to serve their communities before any more are lost. Thank you, acting Llywydd, and I would urge my fellow Members to support this motion. Thank you.