Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Thank you Minister. We will now go through the individual programmes and corresponding subheads for Vote 42 for 2022. The total Vote is €325.298 million which is a 6% increase on 2021. Programme A covers rural development, regional affairs and the islands. The budget here is €202.255 million, which is a 14% increase on 2021. Do members have any questions on programme A? There are no questions from members as yet but I have a question. The Department asked the ESRI to conduct a review of the evaluation of the rural and community development programme in terms of the targets that the Department set, including benchmarking those targets. The report by the ESRI is very positive about the overall high-level targets that the Department has set and is quite complimentary of the work being done by the Department. However, on the enterprise area it did point out that the evaluation, not just in this Department but across Government, is not as rigorous in terms of enterprise supports as it is in other areas. There are substantial enterprise supports within this particular Vote. The report goes on to say that measuring the impact of community and rural development programmes tends to be more complex and typically requires the use of mixed methods, which combine data analysis with qualitative approaches, to gain an understanding of the programme impacts which are often multidimensional and complex. I accept that it is not easy to have a simple measure on the enterprise aspects of this programme but based on the ESRI study, what alterations is the Department making to the evaluation of these particular programmes?