Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick County, Fine Gael)

The Deputy will appreciate it was a pilot scheme that had a relatively small amount of money available and attracted considerable interest. The officials in my Department had to ascribe a basis for the allocation of the moneys, as I have outlined. They also had to cut it off at a certain point because there was no point in continuing secula seculorum. We will be doing this again and will have regard to those who were unsuccessful this time around. I hope to build the scheme into the budget for 2026 at a much higher level. We will take account of the findings from the initial tranche of the pilot.

Hopefully, it will be put on a much more concrete basis in future, akin to something like the sports capital grants, where it will be done regularly. I want to try to support as many as I can and I want to support the smaller ones in particular. This was a first stab at it. In fairness to the officials in the Department, they did their best with a very small amount of money.

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