Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)

The Deputy makes a good suggestion and we will certainly look at it. The potential in the new Our Rural Future document is there to highlight rural isolation and what is happening. I encourage Deputy McCormack to attend the new in-person public consultation event on 17 June in Tullamore for Our Rural Future.

As I said, we have a range of schemes and there are schemes within the Department. For instance, the community centre investment scheme, which is not specifically an isolation or older persons intervention, provides a physical structure communities can use to build programmes and plans to get people into it. Through community centre investment, we were able to allocate €100,000 for Mucklagh community centre and €89,000 for Kilcormac community centre. As I said, the CLÁR programme is currently open. This will target rural areas experiencing decline, including transport provision and funding organisations to acquire buses to bring people into centres or to deliver meals to people.

We will definitely be looking at a specific isolation and elderly strategy because the Deputy is absolutely right that our figures are increasing but there is flexibility within all our programmes.

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