Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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945. To ask the Minister for Rural and Community Development the cumulative funding provided in each local authority since 2020 to date in 2025 under the rural regeneration fund scheme, in tabular form. [25978/25]

Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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The Rural Regeneration and Development Fund (RRDF) is a major capital investment programme which seeks to support large-scale, ambitious projects which can achieve sustainable economic and social development in rural areas.

The Programme for Government recognises the importance of investing in our rural towns and villages through schemes such as the RRDF and contains a commitment to increase the fund.

The objective of the Fund is to support coordinated and integrated projects between our local authorities and other public bodies. The table at the link below provides details of the cumulative funding amount allocated to each local authority for the years 2020-2025.

In addition to this funding, an RRDF Call for Applications was launched in October 2024 The closing date for applications under this Call was the 14 March. Following the assessment of applications, I anticipate an announcement of successful projects will be made in Quarter 3 this year. I also intend to launch a further call for Proposals for larger scale Category 1 RRDF projects later this year.

It should be noted that each RRDF funded project must have a designated Lead Party. In a number of cases, projects with a local authority designated as the Lead Party may also involve other local authorities as partners and have a cross local authority area application.

Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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946. To ask the Minister for Rural and Community Development the cumulative funding provided in each local authority since 2020 to date in 2025 under the local improvements scheme, in tabular form. [25979/25]

Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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The Local Improvement Scheme (LIS) supports improving rural roads and laneways not usually maintained by local authorities. In the period from 2020 to 2025, the government has provided almost €121 million to local authorities for LIS.

The Programme for Government commits to the support of rural communities including a commitment to increase funding under this scheme and I will be engaging in the review of the National Development Plan with a view to increasing the capital allocations for schemes such as LIS.

As has been the case in recent years, I will continue to monitor capital expenditure across my Department as the year progresses, with the potential to utilise any savings that may arise elsewhere for schemes such as the LIS.

The table at the following link provides details of the cumulative funding amount allocated to each local authority for the years 2020 – 2025.

Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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947. To ask the Minister for Rural and Community Development the cumulative funding provided in each local authority since 2020 to date in 2025 under the connected hubs scheme, in tabular form. [25980/25]

Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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A key focus of Our Rural Future - the Government's Rural Development Policy 2021 to 2025 - is to optimise digital connectivity to support vibrant, sustainable rural communities, ensuring equality of access to digital services. Our Rural Future committed to the establishment of a network of 400 remote working hubs across the country by the end of 2025. To this end, Connectedhubs.ie was launched in mid 2021. The platform provides hub owners and customers with a central, easy to use portal that offers and enables the booking of a range of services, particularly professional remote working spaces and meeting rooms. The platform is managed by the WDC in conjunction with DRCD. There are now 381 hubs live on the network which continues to grow.

My Department implemented the 'Connected Hub Calls' in 2021 and 2022. This was a targeted scheme to support the creation of additional remote working capacity and improve and enhance existing facilities and services in hubs across Ireland. The total cost of the projects funded under the 2 calls amounted to €14 million with €8.9 million under the 2021 call and €5.1m under the second call in 2022.

Details of the funding provided in this regard in each local authority area, as requested, are set out at the following link. However, it should be noted that the individual projects funded include hubs with varying ownership models, from privately owned hubs to local authority and community group owned models. Details of each individual project are available on my Department's website.

I am committed to ensuring that the Connected Hubs initiative will continue to make a central contribution to the achievement of the Government's vision for rural digital connectivity, as set out in Our Rural Future and the Programme for Government.