Ms Dee Ryan:

I point the Deputy back to the recommendations of the implementation advisory group. It was a broad and diverse group that reflected local authority representatives. It had two mayors on it over its duration and officials from the local authority executive and the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. Members of the Public Participation Network, PPN, gave great contributions. We had the president of the students' union in the University of Limerick, UL. We tried to be quite broad. I could not praise the chair, Mr. Tim O'Connor, highly enough for the amount of consultation that he did off his own bat. He regularly asked who else we should talk to. He was pushing the envelope the whole time to ensure that we cast the net wide enough to reflect the kind of changes that would deliver real value for the citizens of Limerick. The intention was to be ambitious but that the plan would be deliverable and that we would not be so far off the mark that it would not be achievable. If there was an opportunity for Mr. O'Connor to speak to the committee, he would be able to give members some valuable insights.

In terms of what is doable, I concur with Mr. Moran that it should be while the review of the NDP is going on and while we are at the stage of being about to produce a local development plan. It should be possible to determine an envelope and allocate it to Limerick so that whoever the successful candidate is, he or she can deliver on his or her vision with multi-annual budgeting. The means is very important. We are not looking for new money. Let us average what has come to us recently, what is expected to come to us and take a look at the measures that are being made available through the urban regeneration and development fund and the rural regeneration and development fund and give that to the people of Limerick to determine what they would like to do with it.