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

It is still not clear to me why the decision was made that the islands would not be afforded that specific stand-alone subregional area status, although I appreciate it was considered. In 2016, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the special situation of islands. Through EU policy, islands are to be treated as distinct territories. That seems to be totally against what the Minister and the Department have decided with regard to LEADER. Why can the islands not be dealt with as one subregion, as recommended by EU policy? We saw the impact when there were county-wide budgets. There was minimal delivery for the islands. Some counties ring-fenced funding and one county made no allocation and ring-fenced no funding at all. There were no island-specific actions during that period of 2014 to 2022 through LEADER, despite the major challenges islands face. When those islanders came into the AV room, they acknowledged those important elements, as the Minister called them, but said they were not enough.

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