Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister and I too welcome the scheme. It is a good one and is needed. However, I take it from her answer local authorities do not have autonomy. It would be great if where the authorities have an allocation of X amount of money, do not spend it all and there are a few applications that are on serviced roads where the water and all that is there, they could decide to allocate it to those sites. The decisions about that would be best made by local authorities on the ground that are closer to an area.

I have another point to raise. I read in the document there would be interim reviews as this goes along. Does the Minister know when the first review will be?

This is a really good scheme. It is an exciting scheme for towns and villages. However, the figure of 2,000 homes to be delivered by 2025 is low given we probably have about 166,000 vacant homes across this State. Those are not all in rural areas but that figure should be looked at. We should perhaps be more ambitious about the number of houses we want to see restored because in many cases, in many towns and villages, we do not need to build as we can restore what is there and make a massive difference to communities.

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