Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Cabinet committee on regional and rural affairs last met on 9 May 2017. The Government will shortly make a decision to re-establish more streamlined Cabinet committee structures. The Cabinet committee on regional and rural affairs was established to co-ordinate the work of Departments that affect rural Ireland. Its main focus has been on the preparation and implementation of the action plan for rural development which was published in January. The action plan contains 276 actions for delivery across government, State agencies and other bodies to support improved quality of life, economic activity and public service delivery across Ireland's rural communities.

Good progress has been achieved since the action plan was launched and an interim progress report was submitted to the Cabinet committee and published in May. It identifies progress in areas, including the provision of rural broadband, a €20 million investment in the town and village renewal scheme, 500 additional places for the rural social scheme and establishment of the Atlantic economic corridor task force. One pillar of the action plan is to support enterprise and employment in all regions, with the objective of creating 135,000 extra jobs outside Dublin by 2020. While there are still disparities between areas, the quarter one figures from the CSO show that 77% of all jobs created in the past year were created outside Dublin and that the unemployment rate had fallen in all regions in the past year. The new Minister for Rural and Community Development now has responsibility for leading implementation of the action plan and the first formal six-monthly progress report is due to be published in July.

See this speech in context