Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Minister has confirmed what I thought. The action plan was purely a copy and paste job. He is, of course, saying that great progress has been made. That is not difficult because all the things he mentioned were already in train by Departments. The reality, however, is that rural Ireland is still without the essentials such as broadband, mobile phone connection and roads while the pupil-teacher ratio in the small school is worse than it was in 2011. Basic services are disappearing. I have two specific questions for the Minister.

The Minister's mentioned that LEADER was one of the great actions of the Action Plan for Rural Development. What is the provision for LEADER from 2014 to 2020? It predates the Action Plan for Rural Development anyway. What is the comparison with the provision for the LEADER programme that immediately preceded it from 2007 to 2013? Will the Minister explain something to me about which I am curious? I asked a series of questions about the update and the action plan for which the Minister is responsible. For some inexplicable reason his Department transferred many of those questions, although not all of them because some of them were answered, to other Departments. That is the Minister shirking his responsibility for the Action Plan for Rural Development. I do not blame him for that.

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