Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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511. To ask the Minister for Rural and Community Development the amount of co-funding required for each project under the 2019 town and village renewal scheme; the projected source of co-funding as outlined in the application for project funding; and the projects that were not approved for funding that applied to the 2019 scheme by county in tabular form. [46014/19]

Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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512. To ask the Minister for Rural and Community Development the number of projects approved under the town and village renewal scheme in 2018 and to date in 2019 by county in tabular form; the number of projects that were not approved by county in each year; the reason for refusal; and if there is an appeal mechanism in place to appeal refusal decisions. [46015/19]

Michael Ring (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 511 and 512 together.

The 2019 Town and Village Renewal Scheme was launched in April of this year. Under the 2019 Scheme, grant funding of up to 80% of project costs was available; the remaining 20% of project costs must be contributed by the Local Authority and/or the community. As part of the application process each Local Authority has confirmed that this match funding is in place for all projects; the Department did not request specific details as to the source of the match funding.

There was a strong level of interest in the scheme and 309 applications in total were received for available funding of €15 million. Unfortunately, it was not possible to support all of the applicants within the budget available. The selection of projects was by means of a competitive process and on 31st October, I announced details of the 156 projects that have been approved for funding of €15 million under the 2019 scheme.

While there is no formal appeals system in place for the Town and Village Renewal Scheme, my officials are available to provide feedback to the Local Authorities in respect of any unsuccessful applications.

The number of approved and unsuccessful applications by county in 2018 and 2019 are detailed on Table 1 below. The reasons why projects were not approved for funding include the following reasons:

- the project was not eligible under the terms of the Scheme;

- the project application was withdrawn;

- the project did not score high enough to receive funding, given the budget available.

Table 2 includes a list, by county, of all of the 2019 applications that were not successful for funding.

Table 1: Number of approved and unsuccessful applications per county in 2018 an 2019

Table 2: 2019 project applications that were not approved for funding: