Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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Our Rural Future 2021-2025 is the most ambitious rural development policy for Ireland in decades.

It was published in March 2021 and contains more than 150 measures across the whole of Government, for both short-term recovery and longer-term development.

Updates on the implementation of the five-year policy will be provided by a series of Progress Reports. Annual work programmes will also be published and will allow for priorities to be updated in light of emerging opportunities and challenges.

The First Progress Report, which was published in February, provides updates on a total of 216 actions contained in the 2021 Work Programme for delivery right across Government. I was delighted with the level of achievement detailed in the report, which saw a completion rate of just under 80% on actions to be carried out under the 2021 Work Programme.

There are a number of ongoing actions also reported on, and the progress report shows significant progress across these actions as well as on many of the individual actions which were not completed as planned in 2021.

A new Work Programme for 2022 is currently being finalised in conjunction with Departments and I expect to publish this shortly.However, I can say that it will demonstrate continued commitment to realising the ambitions of Our Rural Future, including the development of some new measures and actions under the policy.

Many of these actions are already underway, and updates on these will be provided in further Progress Reports to be produced every six months, as per the commitment in the policy.