Mr. Brian Rushe:

I thank the Chairman. Senator Paul Daly made a point on this scheme in particular. We are clear in our submission this is a positive scheme. The money is badly wanted for these kinds of developments and for revitalisation.

One of the key elements of this is the awareness piece around it. We said that we as a farm organisation are becoming more au fait with it. This is something we will be telling our membership about and I suppose the word will spread about it. Local authorities have a key role to play around this. They are very good at doing information campaigns on different issues around counties, and this is something that is positive for the local authorities and is something they need to take on board.

There is a big challenge with the financing of it. If a person borrows a lump of money to do up a derelict building on his or her farm, the bank will ask the person if he or she is getting grant-aided and it will not finance the person the grant aid. However, he or she is not getting the grant aid on this until it is completed, so there is a cash flow pressure on it. There needs to be a workaround or something to address that. Mr. McCormack mentioned, and he is quite right, that when one draws down a mortgage it is in five or six tranches and whether there is a possibility of doing that with this grant aid. Maybe the finance could be broken into tranches and made available at certain stages of the development to ease the cash flow. That is just a thought. We recognise this is a positive scheme. While it might not be used massively or in a widespread way, it will be very welcome for the people who avail of it.