Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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226. To ask the Minister for Rural and Community Development the breakdown between funds expended on administration costs and the amount spent on project costs on the Leader programme in each year of the RDP 2014-2020 and to date in 2018, in tabular form. [24232/18]

Michael Ring (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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LEADER is a multi-annual programme for the period 2014-2020 and has a total budget of €250 million. €220 million of this funding has already been allocated to the Local Action Groups (LAGs) throughout the country who deliver the LEADER programme. The remaining €30 million is available for schemes which will be delivered at a national level. The allocation for each sub-regional area is provided for the duration of the Programme rather than on an annual basis. This provides greater flexibility to the LAGs in managing their resources.

Table 1, below, details the expenditure incurred nationally each year to date under the LEADER 2014 - 2020 Programme. This expenditure commenced in 2015 and relates to the costs incurred by the LAGs to develop their Local Development Strategies (Preparatory Support), the administration costs of the LAGs and the costs of their engagement with communities to generate projects - also referred to as "animation" costs. The table also shows expenditure incurred on projects.

The level of project activity has increase significantly in recent months and I understand that approximately 1,000 projects have now been approved for funding of over €28 million, while a further 300 project applications requesting an additional €19.2 million are at various stages in the approval process. I expect the level of expenditure on projects to increase substantially in the coming months as these projects are implemented and the promoters submit claims for payment.

Table 1: LEADER 2014-2020 Expenditure broken down per year