I wish to raise the topic of URDF or its successor, the new cities and towns initiative. I welcome the Taoiseach's announcement yesterday that the housing Minister had raised this at Cabinet and that a new round of funding will be provided for populated areas which are in desperate need of it. In my constituency of Kildare North, towns like Leixlip, Celbridge, Maynooth and Naas are all areas which have seen huge population growth in the past 15 years and new housing continues to be built in these areas. This is being done without much State investment in communities or facilities. URDF funding typically had been given to rejuvenate older large towns and I hope this funding is now being directly used for our rapidly growing towns. I acknowledge that this is not just a north Kildare issue but one that our colleagues in Ashbourne, Athy, Oranmore, Bray and Blanchardstown also know about. When will it be introduced? Can we ensure that this initiative will not just be about future housing development areas but also about areas which have had significant development over past five to seven years so that we can ensure that we backfill those areas too?

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.