Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. This year's town and village renewal scheme has been tailored to assist our rural towns and villages to respond to the challenges presented by Covid-19. The scheme includes an accelerated measure to enable towns and villages to introduce initiatives immediately in order to support increased footfall and enable people to shop and socialise safely in accordance with public health guidelines. The scheme also includes a standard measure that places a focus this year on the recovery of towns and villages from the impact of Covid in the medium term.

When the 2020 town and village renewal scheme was launched in May, it had a budget of €15 million, including an indicative allocation of €5 million for the accelerated measure. The Government's July stimulus package provided an additional €10 million to the scheme, allowing the allocation for the accelerated measure to be doubled. This extra funding for the measure has allowed my Department to increase the number of funding rounds from two to three, increase the number of applications that can be submitted by local authorities and, as an exceptional measure, provide funding under the accelerated measure for larger towns with populations of more than 10,000 people. This is in recognition of the importance of larger towns in supporting the economic and social fabric of surrounding rural communities.

Successful projects under rounds 1 and 2 of the accelerated measure were announced recently, with a total of €6.1 million approved for 226 projects, including those Deputy Cairns mentioned. Applications under round 3 for large towns are being assessed by my officials. Further announcements will be made when the process is complete.

Applications under the standard measure for towns and villages will place a focus on the next stage of recovery. That process will be announced at a later stage.

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