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

Gabhaim buíochas leis na Teachtaí.

First of all, in response to Deputy Paul Donnelly, 22 town regeneration officers are appointed. There are four positions left to be filled. I expect those will be filled in the coming weeks.

Second, we have a national oversight and advisory group for town centre first and it is due to meet later this month. At this meeting, the town centre first national office will outline progress to date on its work programme for the year. I will keep an eye on it to make sure that they are moving on. It is a new position and we want to work with them.

Deputy Cannon is a big supporter of Loughrea town hall. There is a request in from the local authority for more money for that project. My officials are currently going through the due diligence on that. Hopefully, when that is finished, they will make a decision and they will come with a recommendation to me at that stage. In fairness, many projects have gone over budget costing more than initially expected. We are trying to work with local authorities because we want these projects to get finished.

Deputy Stanton spoke to me directly about a project in his constituency where the community needed to acquire a piece of land and the adjacent building so that they could open up access and expand the facilities at a local library in his area. There are two options. The local authority could seek funding under the building acquisitions measure, which is open at present; or it could put together an application under town and village renewal, which will open for applications in June. By the way, in case the Deputy thinks Cork did not do well, it did, as they say up my country, "rightly". It got €34.605 million under the Rural Regeneration and Development Fund. That is only one fund in my Department. I will not read out what the other counties got, but I think they are ahead.

Deputy Colm Burke talked about local authority applications. They have to come through the local authority before they get to me. We liaise with local authorities but, ultimately, they have to make the decision on what comes through.

The title problems were raised with me previously by the Deputy. That will be a matter for the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage.

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