James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail)

The last round of the URDF was URDF 3, which was in 2023. It very much focused on derelict sites, compulsory purchase orders and bringing properties in local authority town centres back into use for local authorities to keep or to sell on. It was a self-replenishing fund in that respect. Previous to that, URDF 2 was announced between the end of 2020 and the start of 2021, which provided substantial funding for schemes in bigger towns and cities in particular. Some of those schemes have been slow to draw down. Some of them were quite big. Covid had a massive impact and slowed down some of the URDF schemes. We are seeing significant drawdown from them now, however. We will look at the URDF again within the context of the national development plan and what funding is made available. I am conscious both of the ambition among a lot of towns for the URDF and the fact that a number of large towns have never received any funding under the URDF or the RRDF.