Ms Sheenagh Rooney:

There is no cap for category 1 funding. That said, we are trying to manage a cashflow of €315 million from now out to 2022 so for every call we have a certain budget, depending on the number of applications we receive. There is no cap as such on the funding for individual projects. We are talking about a ten-year programme of €1 billion. The Castleblayney project, for example, as well as some other projects, have indicated that they will have other phases and there is nothing to stop those other phases coming through in subsequent calls.

It would not be the norm to receive applications for funding in excess of €5 million; such applications would be outliers. The amounts we have awarded to date have generally been between €1 million and €3 million, with very few in excess of €5 million. The largest award we gave, which was for a countrywide project, was €10.26 million. It was a project that was being done in lots of areas around the country involving the National Parks and Wildlife Service, NPWS.