Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

He is going to move money from this fund into the LEADER programme. We will have a discussion about the programme later. The Minister has allocated €350 million for the period from 2019 to 2021 under the rural regeneration and development fund. He is not going to reach that target in the first year, so is that figure of €350 million going to change? It is unbelievable that the Minister will not spend all his money when 70% of applications under the November 2018 call were not green-lighted for progress. Only 84 of 280 applications progressed. I am sure that many applicants whose projects did not get through assessment would love to have the kind of money the Minister is going to send back. How much money does the Minister anticipate re-profiling, to use his own word, from rural regeneration into some other pot to open everything up over the next few weeks?

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