Thomas Pringle (Donegal South West, Independent)
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279. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine his plans to roll out the social farming initiative under the Commission for the Economic Development of Rural Areas budget; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [9046/15]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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Social farming initiatives will be rolled out with the involvement and support of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. My Department has approved an allocation of €40,000, from the CEDRA Rural Innovation Fund, to the Social Farming Across Borders (SoFAB) project. This project allows clients who use health and social services facilities to avail of the option of working on family farms as part of their therapy. SoFAB is operated through the LEADER company, Leitrim Development Company in collaboration with University College Dublin and Queen’s University Belfast

As part of an INTERREG V programme, which concluded last year, this company has placed over 40 clients on 20 family farms on both sides of the Border. This was following a specialist 10 week training course for the clients as well as comprehensive training for over 60 personnel on the delivery of social farming. This funding allocation is being provided to support the SoFAB Support Office during 2015, to enable it continue its work and more importantly to assist it to develop new social farming initiatives around the country.

The Deputy will be aware that primary responsibility for implementation of the CEDRA report has been assigned to Minister of State Ann Phelan, TD and I have been working closely with her on this and other initiatives.