Jennifer Murnane O'Connor (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome this. I welcome Mary Mulholland. I am from Carlow, and Carlow and Kilkenny work together. The scheme needs to be promoted more. I was going to ask how the six towns were picked and that has already been answered. Was a specific allocation made to each of the six towns picked? Is there special funding for them and if so how much?

There was considerable discussion of vacant properties. I have great concern about vacant properties. It is great that we will work with these six towns, which I welcome. However, my town of Carlow has vacant property levies. Those levies are very substantial irrespective of the local authority. In the last budget we went from anything over 6,000 which was originally a 5% levy it has now gone from anything over 6,000 to a 30% levy. That is not an incentive. The bigger picture here with all local authorities together with this is the fact that we need to give incentives, even in these small towns but also in Carlow itself.

I have another issue about rates and I do not know if that was brought up. A revaluation was done between 2014 and 2018 and I believe only 20% of the properties were actually visited. I believe 80% of them were done through maps. These are issues the witnesses might take into consideration in the plan they are doing because these are major issues. For example, Carlow does not get half the capital funding we should get. It all boils down to money. We need to ensure that smaller towns and villages, like Carlow and others, get the capital funding they are not getting. I have many more questions but I know I have to be respectful.

Overall, I think it is good, but on a bigger picture there are major issues that need to be looked at in the 31 local authorities, certainly in my own area.