Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein)
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853. To ask the Minister for Health the funding that has been made available to the Healthy Ireland fund each year since its establishment; if the funding for each of those years was spent in its entirety; the eligibility criteria for availing of the funding; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [18028/20]

Frank Feighan (Sligo-Leitrim, Fine Gael)
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The Healthy Ireland Fund was established in 2017 and has an allocation of €6m in 2020. The majority of the Fund is managed by Pobal on behalf of the Department to fund Local Authorities and Children and Young Persons Services Committees to deliver local actions in key national policy areas such as obesity, physical activity, healthy eating, sexual health, mental health and smoking cessation, with a particular focus on disadvantaged communities, and strengthening the Healthy Cities and Counties Network nationwide. The Fund also supports a number of key national initiatives, including the Active School Flag, a ‘Healthy Ireland at Your Library’ initiative, Age-Friendly Ireland, and strategies for the development of walking, swimming, cycling and running, in partnership with Sport Ireland. The Healthy Ireland communications campaign is also funded from this allocation.

The Fund uses a non-competitive approach to support the building of capacity for partnership action at local level, and to strengthen implementation of both national policy and locally-identified needs and actions.

While delivery of some planned actions in 2020 have been impacted by Covid-19, local authorities have been enabled to review and update programmes of work to deliver actions through alternative mechanisms or re-purpose plans to meet current local needs.

The funding that has been made available to the Healthy Ireland Fund since it was established in 2017 and the out-turn for each year is provided in the table below.