Departmental Schemes
Dail Éireann — 2025-06-26
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Patrick O'Donovan (FG), Limerick County

The Deputy will appreciate it was a pilot scheme that had a relatively small amount of money available and attracted considerable interest. The officials in my Department had to ascribe a basis for the allocation of the moneys, as I have outlined. They also had to cut it off at a certain point because there was no point in continuing secula seculorum . We will be doing this again and will have regard to those who were unsuccessful this time around. I hope to build the scheme into the budget for 2026 at a much higher level. We will take account of the findings from the initial tranche of the pilot.
Hopefully, it will be put on a much more concrete basis in future, akin to something like the sports capital grants, where it will be done regularly. I want to try to support as many as I can and I want to support the smaller ones in particular. This was a first stab at it. In fairness to the officials in the Department, they did their best with a very small amount of money.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-06-26/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:45+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-06-26