Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent)
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102. To ask the Minister for Rural and Community Development if she intends to provide any additional interim Leader funding for 2023 in order to ensure that there is no gap in the provision of funding for community groups; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [44768/22]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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The LEADER Programme is a key intervention of Our Rural Future, the Government’s Policy for rural development which aims to deliver a range of actions to rural communities over the lifetime of the policy. It is a multi-annual programme for rural development co-funded by the EU through the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

I was delighted to welcome the recent announcement that the European Commission has confirmed their approval of Ireland’s CAP Strategic Plan for 2023-2027, which includes the LEADER programme. This approval is a key step in the delivery of the next LEADER programme for the period 2023-2027

A number of further steps will now be completed by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine in advance of bringing the CAP Plan to Government for final approval in the coming weeks.

As part of the new Common Agricultural Policy Strategic Plan, the Government has committed significant funding of €180m to LEADER for 2023-2027. This allocation was agreed by Government in October 2021.

Transitional funding of €70m was provided for the LEADER Programme for 2021 and 2022 to ensure that there was no gap in funding prior to the commencement of the 2023-2027 programme.

My Department’s focus now is to finalise the design of the new LEADER programme in conjunction with key stakeholders. I hope to be in a position to launch the selection process in the coming weeks.

For the duration of the selection process, stakeholders will be engaged in preparatory work relating to strategy design and a separate funding stream is available to support this work.

While this process is ongoing, existing LEADER Groups will also still be engaged in delivering projects on the ground and in closing out the current programme.

All available project funding has not yet been allocated to projects or drawn down by LEADER groups under the transitional programme. Approximately 80% of project funding has been committed by LEADER groups and I am aware that they continue to develop projects ‘in the pipeline’ in order to fully utilise the available budget.

On top of this core funding, additional Exchequer funding for administration costs has been put in place for LEADER groups who have exhausted all such existing funding in 2022. I have confirmed that this funding will be made available again in 2023, in cases where it is required by LEADER groups. It is not expected that all groups will require such funding in either 2022 or 2023. For example, it is anticipated that only half of LEADER Groups may require this funding by end 2022.

I am confident that the LEADER allocations made available by the Government, as outlined, are sufficient to allow LEADER to build on the success of the programme over the last 30 years in Ireland without any gap in the servicing of the programme.