Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the publication of this plan as someone who has lived in rural Ireland all of her life and who would live nowhere else. It is an ambitious plan and I acknowledge that. The difficulty is that while it is a five-year strategic plan, it is disappointing that the timelines were not there in the first place. The Minister referred to short-term and longer-term deliverables but, again, there is no distinction in the report or in the 150 commitments it contains. Much of the funding for the action plan is repackaged funding, including the €2 billion to €3 billion for the national broadband plan and the €1 billion for the rural regeneration fund. In fact, I do not believe there is any new funding, at least figuratively, in the plan. Will the Minister indicate what are the targets in the plan for job creation in the context of the 400 remote working hubs?

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