Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There is a total allocation of €250 million for the Leader programme and €40 million is in the budget for this year. I want to get this moving. That is the main thing. I want to see the funding out in the communities because that is where it needs to be. I am attending an event in Virginia in County Cavan on Friday and I will be signing the contracts there for at least 18 of the agreements with the local action groups, LAGs.

Leader is governed by EU regulations. It provides for the development and implementation of publicly funded local government strategies by partnerships of key public and private actors, the local action groups. There are different local action groups throughout the country and the first 18 agreements will be signed on Friday. That funding is in place and I want to see the LAGs facilitating the applications and getting the money out. There are many projects because people have been waiting for this. There are many people with different ideas and who want to set up businesses and do different things. I want to see that rolled out as quickly as possible.

To be clear, the €40 million is for this year. There are some administration costs of between €6 million and €8 million in total for this year.

That is for closing off the old Leader programme and also starting the new programme which will begin shortly. The Leader programme is huge in rural Ireland. It has been great up to now and many powerful projects have been funded.

I want to see how we can incentivise people to live in towns again. There is nothing more evident than that when we are out canvassing. When we knock on doors, there is nobody there because nobody is living in town centres. They have all moved out. I would like to see some change in this regard. I have spoken to the Minister for Finance about this to see how we can incentivise young people and owner-occupiers to come back into towns. A number of years ago, the trend was for publicans and shopkeepers to build fine houses in the suburbs and they moved out, so there was nothing happening in the middle of towns. I want to see how we can get people back in, however, because people bring business and that is it at the end of the day. That is something that I certainly want to work on. The town and village renewal scheme will be targeted at populations of less than 5,000.

I think I have covered most of the issues.