Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail)
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946. To ask the Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht the amount of money spent on Commission for the Economic Development of Rural Areas projects, by county, in each year from 2014 to 2016 to date; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [24695/16]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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The Report of the Commission for the Economic Development of Rural Areas (CEDRA) was published in April 2014. Initiatives that have emerged to date that can be directly related to the recommendations contained in the CEDRA report include the Rural Economic Development Zones (REDZ) pilot initiative in 2015, the Town and Village Renewal Scheme which I launched recently, and other smaller schemes administered by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine during 2015.

Table 1 below details the funding allocated by county under the REDZ pilot initiative in 2015. Due to the success of the pilot scheme in 2015, I will shortly announce details of a follow-up REDZ scheme to facilitate the initiation of new REDZ projects. The REDZ funding will focus on initiatives that support economic development in the relevant areas.

On 9^thAugust this year, I launched the Town and Village Renewal Scheme as part of the Government’s programme to support rural development. I have allocated €10 million for the scheme this year. A sum of €380,000 has been made available to each of the 26 counties under this initial phase of this scheme. Local Authorities, in conjunction with local communities and businesses, have been invited to submit proposals to my Departmentby the end of September for approval under the scheme.

There are a number of smaller schemes administered by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine which relate to recommendations in the CEDRA report, including a North/South Social Farming initiative (SoFAB), a local artisan food markets initiative, and an initiative to support rural female entrepreneurs (ACORN). I understand that these schemes were allocated in the region of €1 million between them in 2015.

Table 1: REDZ Pilot allocations by county, 2015

* Figure includes a cross-county project (Leitrim, Roscommon, Longford & Cavan)