Michael Ring (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy is quite correct that some of the local authorities have failed again. Some, such as Carlow and Cavan, spent 100%. I will not go through every county in the list, but it goes down to Donegal which spent 8% of the funding provided to it for the town and village renewal scheme. We do not want to penalise the local authorities which performed and delivered and we need to deal with the others. In relation to the town and village scheme, I have to take some of the blame myself, to be fair, on the basis that I did not get it out in time last year. However, I got it out which I was anxious to do. We always said it would be a 15-month scheme. Deputy Ó Cuív is correct that we hoped to reach €7.5 million. In April, the spend has increased to €1.8 million. We hope it will be close to €2.5 million by the end of the month. The spending is beginning to happen now. It is happening in other areas of the scheme. Local authorities are beginning to spend the money because they know they gave a commitment to do it. We have to give them a bit of latitude given the weather. The Deputy is correct that I will have to make decisions. I will make those decisions. The Deputy knows what is annoying here because he was in this job before. Local authorities and local authority members up and down the country cry out for funding, but when one provides it, they cannot deliver. I will give them some leeway on the town and village renewal scheme because we always said it would be a 15-month scheme. They must now ensure it starts to rev up again this year so that when the scheme is announced again, it continues over the next number of years.