Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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The rural development goal of my Department is to promote and maintain living and working populations in rural areas by helping to foster sustainable and culturally vibrant communities there. In that context, my Department's rural development initiatives in the next year will include: continued implementation of the CLÁR and Leader programmes and the rural social scheme; implementation of the farm electrification grant scheme, for which I recently assumed responsibility from the Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources; advancing the work of Comhairle na Tuaithe; working in close co-operation with the Department of Agriculture and Food and the EU Commission in the negotiations on the adoption of the draft EU Regulation on Rural Development for the period 2007-2013; consideration, in co-operation with relevant Departments, of action on the review of rural enterprise supports; support of projects under the rural development fund; promoting debate and progressing rural development issues through the national rural development forum; continuation of cross-Border co-operation in rural development; leading the rural development co-ordinating committee under the NDP; participation as appropriate in interdepartmental committees on issues appropriate to rural development such as the national spatial strategy; continuation of support to the Western Development Commission in the discharge of its functions; and reviewing and updating priorities to be addressed under the White Paper on Rural Development.