Rural Schemes Dail Éireann — 2026-05-21 ============================================================ Dara Calleary (FF), Mayo He has seen tens of thousands of buildings, but he will also see, should he choose to see it, much progress and that things are happening on the ground. We are providing that level of investment through the RRDF and town and village renewal and we want to provide more. We will provide more investment and the Department is focused on that through Our Rural Future. That is why we have invested in our town regeneration officers across the country, who work in partnership with the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. We have people on the ground identifying properties and their ownership and, ideally, working in the first place with local communities to upgrade and repurpose them. The Minister, Deputy Browne, and Minister of State, Deputy Cummins, are working on guidelines on spaces over shops because that will lead to the ultimate regeneration of towns, namely getting people back living in them and having life in towns after 6 p.m. That is happening on the ground if the Deputy chooses to see it. --- 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/2026-05-21/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:58+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-05-21