Patricia Ryan (Kildare South, Sinn Fein)
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916. To ask the Minister for Rural and Community Development her plans to extend the LEADER programme from its current end date of 31 December 2020 to ensure continuity of funding; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [36361/20]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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As the Deputy will be aware, the current 2014-2020 LEADER programme comes to an end this year as far as new project commitments are concerned.  Currently, all funding allocations to projects must be committed before 31^stDecember 2020 by the Local Action Groups (LAGs) who deliver LEADER locally.

The LAGs have previously indicated to my Department that they will have their remaining project budgets committed by the year’s end.  However, my Department is engaging with stakeholders to ascertain the extent that an extension to the programme might be required to ensure that the project budgets are fully utilised.

In terms of the next LEADER programme, due to delays in agreeing the EU budget for the post-2020 period, the next EU-funded programme will not commence until 2022 at the earliest.

The Programme for Government includes a commitment to prioritise a State-led programme to bridge the gap between the current LEADER programme and the next EU programme. The objective of this Transitional Programme is to allow locally-led rural development projects to continue to be delivered using the LEADER model until the new EU programme commences.

An extra €4 million has been provided for LEADER in Budget 2021, to bring the total allocation for next year to €44 million.  This allocation will be used to fund a combination of existing projects as they come to completion, as well as for new projects to be approved under the Transitional Programme and to support the administration costs of LAGs in closing out the existing programme and delivering the Transitional Programme.

The Transitional Programme is currently being finalised and I hope to be in a position shortly to announce the full details of project and administration allocations under the Programme.