Mr. Fintan O'Brien:

I thank the Deputy. I agree with that point. For me, an important part of the strategy was that it would bring clarity as to the structure, with everybody feeding into it. I also wholeheartedly agree in relation to the work of local authorities, LDCs and rural regeneration officers on the ground working with stakeholders, landowners and community groups. There is no strategy without that work happening on the ground. It would be just a piece of paper without all that work, so I completely agree.

I also agree that not every investment has to be all bells and whistles and entail a huge state-of-the-art facility. I have been lucky enough to see quite a lot of the investments around the country. Variation across rural areas is really important.

On outdoor recreation posts, we have put six posts in place on a pilot basis. The original idea of a pilot was that because it involved something new, we wanted to trial it. There was a competitive process in place, run by Sport Ireland. Decisions on the locations were based on the likes of the business case submitted. Also, we wanted to ensure that if we were doing a pilot, we would have different types of counties. We had coastal counties offering a certain thing and inland counties offering something different. It was to see how the post would work in different settings. We are pretty much halfway through, so the idea now is to review and see how the posts are working. If a pilot works, we should be considering whether benefit can be added somewhere else.