Mr. Fintan O'Brien:

From our point of view, the initial allocation that came out in the budget was €21 million. The note I had for 2025 was €20 million, but I can double-check that. From our point of view, these allocations are finalised when they go through the process with the committees and they get signed off at the end of the year. There has been a lot of development and investment in the town and village renewal scheme, with approximately 900 projects around the country since 2020. I am happy enough that I have seen quite a lot of them and there is a lot of good stuff happening there.

We are very conscious of that inflationary pressure and the idea of getting bang for buck and whether this is being eaten into. We see this across the rural regeneration and development fund, RRDF, and the town and village renewal, TVR, scheme. We have even seen it in smaller schemes such as CLÁR. To a degree, one of the ways we have tried to handle this is that while we cannot control inflation, obviously, we have been speaking to local authorities as we have gone along. One of the things they have asked about is the fact that they cannot get as much as they used to for some of those maximum values in particular bands of schemes. For example, CLÁR used to have a maximum of €50,000 and this has gone up to €65,000 this year. This is not fixing inflation but we are trying to be cognisant of these challenges. Part of the process is continuous engagement with local authorities as they go through projects. As cost pressures continue to arise, we are trying to deal with them, making sure we are staying within budget and seeing whether we have to cut our cloth on certain projects. There is a constant whirl of engagement with local authorities. We have the very challenging task of trying to implement a range of projects with this inflationary pressure. We are aware of it. Personally, I do not have a fix for inflation but we are very much aware of it.