Garret Ahearn (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the three young McGreehans to Seanad Éireann today. They should be very proud of their mother. From looking at them and how well behaved they are, I think Fianna Fáil will be well represented in Louth for the years to come.

The town and village renewal scheme is an important scheme for towns and villages in my county of Tipperary. It is part of a number of schemes in the Department of Rural and Community Development, which is a Department that was set up by the Fine Gael Party in 2016.It benefits rural areas, which is really important. Hopefully, there will be an announcement soon on the town and village renewal scheme. An awful lot of projects in Tipperary have submitted applications. Will the Leader contact the Minister find out when the announcement will be made?

It is really important that these schemes get up and running as quickly as possible. We see the rising cost of construction almost on a weekly basis. I think there are ten applications from Tipperary alone. Some are from Tipperary town, including one to do up a recreational amenity.

There is a really good application from Ballyporeen for the upgrade of an old school house into a enterprise hub with broadband and a community centre. These are really important things for rural areas and towns. There is an application from Golden which my colleague, Councillor Michael FitzGerald, has been working on to do up the area at the kind of island where the bridge is. There is a range of other ones. It is really important that the announcement is made as quickly as possible. I ask the Leader to find out when it will be.