Mr. William Parnell:

I will try to be as helpful as I can but the Acting Chairman will appreciate that the Minister is currently finalising the transitional LEADER programme, which will cover 2021 and potentially 2022 and so I am not at liberty to give any specific details of funding at this point. The Minister met all of the local development companies recently and she has assured them that there will be funding available to cover their administrative expenditure and for new projects under the transitional programme. The local development companies will continue to work on closing the 2014-2020 LEADER programme, which will be a large body of work for them into next year. In addition, they will be asked to deliver projects and to identify other projects under a new transitional programme. As I said, the Minister assured the local development companies that funding would be available for these purposes. The conversation with them very much focused on the types of projects that might be included in the transitional programme. It was a very constructive meeting, particularly in terms of the feedback from the local development companies on areas on which they felt the transitional programme might focus.