Rural Schemes

16. Deputy Ruairí Ó Murchú asked the Minister for Rural and Community Development and the Gaeltacht the funding available to Louth County Council under the 2026 town and village renewal scheme; the criteria used to assess applications; the expected date for announcing successful projects; and whether additional funding will be considered where the value of eligible applications exceeds the funding available. [72813/26]

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Teachta Ó Murchú as an gceist seo faoi Chontae Lú. The TVRS is one of a number of measures designed to rejuvenate rural towns and villages across Ireland. Since 2016, over €217 million has been allocated to 2,000 projects across the country, with over €6.6 million allocated to 71 projects in Louth. The 2026 TVRS building and land acquisition measure invited local authorities to apply for funding of up to €500,000 to purchase up to three vacant or derelict buildings or sites for the future development of community assets. Funding of €7.2 million was awarded for 38 successful projects in July. For reasons of commercial sensitivity, details of successful applications remain confidential until conveyancing is complete. A further TVRS call for proposals was issued to local authorities on 16 September last. There are two funding streams available under this call: the main scheme and the project development measure. Under the main scheme, local authorities can submit applications for one project up to a value of €500,000 and three further projects with a maximum value of €300,000 each. Local authorities can submit two applications under the project development measure, which provides up to €50,000 per application to undertake the required planning and development work to underpin the development of successful projects. The closing date for the submission of applications to our Department is 22 January 2027. I am not sure what the closing date in Louth is. I would encourage the Deputy to check that. I look forward to receiving high-quality applications from Louth and we will be in a position to make announcements in 2027. All of the applications are competitively assessed against the criteria and objectives. We consider suitability, geographical spread, the quality of the projects and their ability to impact on the regeneration of a town or village. This scheme is always heavily subscribed. It is very intensely contested, and I am conscious that demand for funding regularly exceeds the budget available. However, we work very hard in the Department to ensure that we can provide funding to make the maximum impact in communities across County Louth.

We have all seen where these projects have made a genuine difference. We all welcome the fact that the living city initiative has been introduced to major towns in County Louth. We have all seen the flight of shops and other things from our towns. It is about putting a process and a framework in place so that we can deliver living towns, villages and cities, as the people of Drogheda would often say. That sort of commentary probably would not do the Minister much good in Dundalk. It is just about ensuring, particularly for some of the projects that involve significant sums that could possibly go above the amount allowed for grant aid, we consider scenarios whereby there would be a facility to ensure they actually happen and do not stop on the basis of money. While we all accept that we have to look after the State coffers, it is just about ensuring that no project is held back on the basis of a slight shortfall in money.

We have had a pretty good discussion all morning in relation to this. The Minister of State, Deputy Buttimer, and I are very focused on it. There is no point in us allocating grant funding to any local authority under any project unless it makes a difference on the ground and is delivered. The assessment process seeks to capture that, in that we look at the local authority's capacity to deliver, its delivery of previous projects for which funding has been allocated from within our Department, and what it has done to involve the community in the roll-out and design of the projects. We have made some changes to the TVRS this year so that villages that have traditionally been within the footprint of a city, and which previously were not funded, will be brought into a pilot scheme for villages within cities to protect their identity as the city grows out. It will not take away from the rural emphasis of the TVRS but it will also seek to support those communities within existing cities. Finally, I have introduced a third project development measure in 2026 for those towns that have had a flood relief scheme to make proposals for the rejuvenation of the town after the completion of the relief scheme.

I welcome the Minister's comments in relation to flood relief schemes. County Louth, and particularly Dundalk, is utterly susceptible to flooding. In the near future, as that piece of work is done, I would like to think we could have projects that will facilitate the betterment of the region and of people's lives. The issue, first and foremost, is actually delivering on those schemes which are all behind where we would like to them to be. We have seen the huge work that has been done with departmental funding for Bridge Street and the area around the St. Nicholas quarter. It is about ensuring we see follow through on these projects. What was good about that was the fact that we started and, over multiple funding streams, the project was followed through on. The fear is that sometimes we do a bit of a project and do not see it through.

I had the privilege of being in Dundalk in May and was really taken aback, in a good way, by how vibrant it is. A lot of the difficulties that face other towns in terms of dereliction and vacancy seem to have been addressed within the town. There is a very vibrant town centre, with investment from Louth County Council, the Government and, more importantly, local enterprise and local entrepreneurs. Town regeneration officers are doing huge work throughout the length and breadth of the country. We fund them and work closely with the Department of housing in relation to town teams and the town centre first policy. We had a good discussion earlier with Deputy Conor McGuinness and Deputy O'Shea about the challenges of those more complex projects, in terms of identifying properties that have become derelict but where ownership issues are contested. It can be very difficult and that is where we need to give assistance to local authorities. They also need to learn from each other in the management of those complex cases.