Twenty of the State's most disadvantaged towns have been chosen for special investment in facilities and services over the next three years.
No specific budget has been alocated to the scheme, the second phase of the so-called RAPID (Revitalised Areas by Planning, Investment and Development) programme.
But the towns chosen have been asked to prepare detailed submissions, on the basis of which National Development Plan funding will be fast-tracked to meet the "genuine requirements" identified.
Longford, Tipperary and Cavan head the list of disadvantaged small towns, which were selected on objective criteria including low levels of educational attainment and high incidence of social housing.
The other small towns chosen were: Athy, Co Kildare; Ballinasloe and Tuam, Co Galway; Mallow and Youghal, Co Cork; New Ross, Co Wexford; and Carrick-on-Suir, Co Tipperary.
Ten larger towns have also been chosen, including Galway city, which was not part of the "strand 1" phase of RAPID, dealing with large urban areas and announced early last year.
Athlone, Carlow, Clonmel, Ennis, Kilkenny, Navan, Sligo, Tralee and Wexford complete the list of large towns, where the scheme will focus on particular areas of disadvantage within the urban boundaries.
About 100,000 people will benefit from the provincial strand of the programme, according to Area Development Management Ltd, which made the selections.
The RAPID process requires local authorities to appoint a co-ordinator for each town, who will work with an area implementation team, drawn from local residents, State agency personnel and the local partnership company, to prepare a plan.
The programme will be overseen by a National Monitoring Committee, chaired by Dr Maureen Gaffney and reporting to the Government.
The Minister for the Environment said the scheme was about "giving a lift" to the towns and areas chosen. "The RAPID programme is about revitalising and renewing the selected towns. It's about targeting those communities in these towns who have, to an extent, missed out on our recent prosperity, and front-loading investment under the NDP," Mr Dempsey said.
But Fine Gael dismissed the scheme as a continuation of the "scatter-gun approach to regional development that has failed us in the past".
The party's spokeswoman on local government, Ms Olivia Mitchell, said if the Government was serious it would tackle the problem in the context of the national spatial strategy, "which has been talked about for four years but is still a secret".
She added: "What they're doing instead is producing, on the eve of a general election, yet another plan, a plan for every town in Ireland, it seems.
"There are no specifics about funding. They're just giving people hope that there may be some sort of plan in the future. But to promise every town in Ireland like this is a disgrace."
