Jimmy Deenihan (Kerry North-West Limerick, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Deputies Ó Fearghaíl and McLellan referred to heritage towns. When they were first designated, heritage towns attracted a huge amount of interest. At the outset, the branding in this regard was very effective in the beginning and people witnessed the benefits of it. Signs were placed on the outskirts of towns to indicate that they were heritage towns and this led to them attracting a great deal of interest and prestige. The scheme, which came under the remit of Fáilte Ireland - and Bord Fáilte before it - was allowed to lapse and no one took responsibility for it. When the residents of heritage towns and their representatives indicated their disappointment to me in this regard, I decided that we should do something about such towns. I mentioned the matter to one of my officials, Mr. Martin Colreavy, who proceeded to discuss it with Fáilte Ireland. As a result, the latter developed the historic towns initiative pilot scheme in order to revitalise the entire programme. Overall, there are 34 heritage towns throughout the country. For a variety of reasons, Fáilte Ireland chose three of these for the pilot scheme and despite the fact that its budget is extremely tight, the Department provided €240,000 - €80,000 per town. We expected that Fáilte Ireland might provide the same amount of funding but it could not do so as a result of the constraints relating to its budget. It did, however, provide a total of €90,000 - €30,000 per town. We also asked the towns themselves to provide €80,000. I suppose it is a nice pot of money.

We asked the towns to indicate what they would do with the money they received. They each came up with programmes in this regard and these have proven to be very effective. I am delighted Deputy McLellan has seen evidence of this.