Ms Teresa Heeney:

It perhaps could be a rolling window. The window for applications is often very short. As the Senator knows, it can take a lot of blocks to be in place before a service might be ready to make an application. It is useful that the programme is available to all services, rather than to just one type of service, because in some more rural towns there is only one operator. It might be a community operator or a small private concern that operates almost like a community service. It is important we develop a scheme to which brand new services can also apply because such a scheme does not currently exist. To take Boyle as an example, on “Morning Ireland” last week we heard an article about Boyle having no service. That service needs to be able to find funding.