Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)

First, I will respond to the Deputy's overall remarks about our key priorities.

The key scaffolding document for the Department is Our Rural Future. We are involved in a sensitive consultation about rewriting Our Rural Future at the moment. We have had public meetings, including an online meeting yesterday. The document will be published at the end of this year or early next year. We have further consultation to do on it. That will set the priorities.

I live in a rural community. I absolutely know about the challenges of public services, but it is also important to note that from 2011 to 2022 the Central Statistics Office, CSO, data shows a 7% increase in the population of highly rural or remote areas. The OECD, which is independent, has shown that rural or remote regions in Ireland recorded the highest population growth between 2001 and 2021 among all OECD countries. We recognise that within that there are areas that have experienced substantial population decline. That is why we are targeting our programmes. All our programmes are relatively new and need time to bed in. It is not a case of just continuing to work on priorities, it is about allowing time to bed them in.

We are revising all the CLÁR areas at the moment to ensure we have the most up-to-date targets and we will have maps to that effect prepared.

Regarding public services, such as health, An Garda Síochána and housing, there are issues for other Departments, but in the context of our revision of Our Rural Future, we will be highlighting opportunities and challenges and engaging with other Departments on their plans.

It is just a programme cycle with the LEADER programme. It goes through a cycle, as the Deputy will be aware from his experience, of high demand and wind down. It is currently beginning to rack up demand. That is what is reflected.

The Gaeltacht carry-over was predominantly from Údarás na Gaeltachta. We are working on capital programmes with Údarás na Gaeltachta as we discussed yesterday evening and some shared island projects were also carried over.

I have dealt with the priorities area. The original 2024 Revised Estimate for rural funding was €205 million. This year, we are at about €212 million so we are continuing to grow the funding.

I endorse what the Deputy said and thank the communities that are engaging with us and with local development companies. Without the Department's funding and without the officials in my Department working with those local development companies, that work could not happen. We are continuing to make sure we can measure its impact during the course of this next term.