Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I know many of those towns. Boyle, Banagher, Callan and, indeed, all of them are beautiful towns. There are interesting projects happening in them. There is an interesting housing project taking place in Callan which would be superbly worth supporting. Mr. McCarthy's approach is right in that it is about engaging with the community and so on. It is stated in the national planning framework that this is our key objective, and it was right to bring life back to the core of particularly those 18th and 19th century market towns, but then we just dispersed money to everything. Mr. McCarthy said there is a €1 billion fund, which there is, but we should have focused it on building up those villages and towns as the centre of the revival of rural Ireland, but we did not. We dispersed the money in the end and when I read Mr. McCarthy's documents, I note little amounts of money are going everywhere. Rather than six towns, the Department should be undertaking this process in 60 or 600.