Michael Ring (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

To be fair, it is one of the things I am looking at. The Deputy is correct. As with the town and village scheme or the outdoor recreation scheme, if one does not spend in advance, one will have a difficulty. Category 2 will provide seed funding for projects and I expect a lot of it will be drawn down quickly. Some of the schemes are shovel-ready. Those behind one €4 million project have told me they expect it to be completed by September of next year. I am hopeful that people are as good as their word. The project is shovel-ready and an effort will be made to ensure that work will start and projects will be completed by the end of the year. I take the Deputy's point. It is something I am considering. He is correct, given the outdoor recreation scheme, that we need to push on with further schemes and greater spend than perhaps I should do and make the allocations. It is as simple as that and I do not disagree with what the Deputy says.

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