Michael Ring (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will get the Department to send the Senator the maps. Every local authority area has its map because they have to consider these maps when making their application under the CLÁR programme. The Senator made a valid point. In my area, there are towns and, in particular, villages that are in CLÁR and others that are not in it but should be. I have to be careful how I put it but there are villages where one would feel they have a better standard of living and more people are working and employed there than in other areas. I saw it myself. An area that made an application for a scheme did not qualify because it was not in the CLÁR programme. I would consider this area to suffer major disadvantage. Therefore, I intend to carry out a review of the scheme.

One of the best aspects of the scheme is the first responder supports. Last week, we provided funding of more than €500,000 to doctors who are on-call and make themselves available in a voluntary capacity. Renault sponsored a number of vehicles throughout the country and I helped to fit out the equipment. These first responders, as they are called when there is an accident, have saved many lives in rural parts of Ireland.There is the Order of Malta and there are many other voluntary organisations. They give of their time to provide a service to communities and they are expected to also collect money for vehicles that can cost anything up to €100,000, which does not make sense to me and that is why I brought in this scheme. Last year I asked the local authorities and the communities if they wanted to make an application for a miscellaneous scheme. I will do the same again this year. I did it on the basis that if there was something I felt several communities needed I could consider a scheme for the following year.

I would love to have more money for the CLÁR programme. It was one of the better schemes in respect of local authority expenditure and how it worked. I intend to open it again early in the new year along with the local improvement scheme, LIS. I will review the overall context of the CLÁR programme, who is in and who is out. We need to have guidelines because we want to identify and target the disadvantaged areas, particularly in CLÁR.