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

As I said, I am expecting that in a few weeks we will ask local authorities to hire the people to get them in place as soon as possible. As the Deputy knows, funding was also provided by my Department to consider a specific town in every single county. Some €100,000 was provided to look at that. The town regeneration officers will work with all the towns and villages in their area. It will not be specific to the one town that got the funding. As I am sure the Deputy knows, Strokestown got that money in her constituency. We want those who got the funding to look at the different aspects of their town and we want the plan. I was in a village near me last night, Newbliss, where a plan was launched. Again, towns and villages are going nowhere if they do not have these plans. We have been funding plans in a number of different places. Some towns are very good, while others are a little more disjointed. The role of the town regeneration officer will be to pull them all together and then draw down the different funding schemes that are available.

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