Ceisteanna ar Pholasaí nó ar Reachtaíocht - Questions on Policy or Legislation Dail Éireann — 2026-03-04 ============================================================ Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central It is opening in the next two weeks. There are no restrictions on where it can be applied or on who can apply, and there never has been, other than the population threshold. Some new developing areas have received it as well as areas where people wanted the rejuvenation of older parts of a city or a town. The Deputy has named so many towns that I would say he would nearly take the budget himself. Under the old URDF if funding was allocated, the local authorities needed to get the work done faster. The Minister is going to apply timelines and if it is not used, we will take it back and use it somewhere else. There was an inordinate length of time to get funding through with the last URDF. This is the new living cities and towns initiative. I have asked the Minister to try to be as flexible as possible on that population threshold but we will see where that ends up. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-03-04/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:43+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-03-04