Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)

The Portumna project is fantastic. I commend the Senator on her work on that. We are putting capital delivery teams in place across every local authority so that each has a core group of people who have experience in dealing with the Department and who can deliver those projects on the ground. In the context of delivering projects, there are some stand-out local authorities and some that are less stand-out. We have appointed a senior official in the Department to engage and liaise with capital delivery teams on the delivery of projects to try to assist those authorities that are not standing out as well to stand out.

Capital funding for RRDF in 2017 was €80 million. It is €240 million now. We will continue to invest in RRDF because, as the Chair referenced, it is a flagship project for many areas.

Many areas and communities are getting a chance to reimagine spaces. All of our schemes have that potential.

I mentioned earlier to Deputy McGuinness that I was in Feohanagh in County Limerick last Thursday evening, where a parochial house that was no longer in use has been reimagined as a community hub. The great thing is that it was not done by the council. It was the local women's group who came together when the house came up for sale by the church. They made an offer to buy it, got together with Limerick County Council, LEADER and the Department, and they now have this fantastic hub that provides community space and meeting rooms. Otherwise, it is a house that would have been left or sold without any community facilities.

That is the point I made at the beginning. We work well with local authorities and development companies, but we work best with communities that are really ambitious. Unless they have that ambition, however, the community will not have ownership of the projects. We can see the difference where a community owns a project and is invested in the project and where it is not. We will continue to work with the local authorities to get them all up to a similar standard of delivery.

The Minister of State, Deputy Buttimer, will deal with the rural transport side, given that he is also Minister of State at the Department of Transport with that responsibility.