Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

LEADER, the social inclusion and community activation programme, SICAP, community services, CLÁR, townland and village and outdoor recreation are departmental schemes to enhance communities and to make them more vibrant. Of course, we need to do more because we have had a significant deficit in the rural areas and they have suffered most. CLÁR is there to help the areas where there is a serious decline in population and to bring them on and make them more vibrant. Some communities are better at it than others so we need to work on that.

The Deputy mentioned the group water schemes. These have been the backbone of communities in rural Ireland and have brought services to the doors of many families which would not have been provided without the meitheal going on within parishes and half-parishes. When reviewing all these schemes, we will look to see how best we can develop them. For instance, we will look at the group water schemes to see if there is anything we can do to assist the local authorities in providing funding there. It is important we work across Departments to see how we can source the funding to make the communities better places to live, work and invest in.

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