Conor McGuinness (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
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2748. To ask the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht the details of the representatives of fishing communities that were invited to the consultations regarding the next iteration of Our Rural Future. [44721/25]

Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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Our Rural Future, the national rural development policy recognises the importance of the fisheries and marine sectors in supporting the economic sustainability of our coastal and island communities.

The policy contains a number of measures to support these sectors, and recent initiatives include the launch by my colleague, the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Marine, of the Fisheries Local Action Groups (FLAG) Coastal Communities Development Scheme, which will provide €15 million over the coming years to support economic development in our coastal communities, and over €4 million to the Local Authority Marine Infrastructure Scheme, which will fund over 50 projects supporting maritime communities right across Ireland’s coastline.

The next iteration of Our Rural Future, which will cover the period from 2026, will continue our whole-of-Government approach to the development and implementation of rural development policy and will reflect the Government’s ongoing commitment to coastal communities and the fishing industry.

The consultation process to inform the development of the new policy commenced with an online survey which ran from 10 March until 2 April 2025. This survey was open to all interested parties, and participants completed the survey anonymously. I am very pleased with the strong level of engagement, with almost 1,300 responses received.

The second phase of consultation was a series of eight stakeholder and public events which have recently taken place across rural Ireland and online. The design of these consultation events included a geographical spread of in person events in order to garner the views of a wide spectrum of people and interested parties, including those in fishing communities. As part of this, a number of events took place in close proximity to coastal communities in Mayo, Donegal, and Waterford, with an event also held in Irish in the Connemara Gaeltacht.

Both of these consultation phases were widely publicised and open to all interested parties and members of the public. Invitations were also issued to a broad range of stakeholders and representative groups, including, for example, Bord Iascaigh Mhara, who were also encouraged to disseminate the invite amongst their own networks. Participants in the various consultations were not required to disclose their interest as part of the process, however, I was conscious to ensure that the approach taken was sufficiently wide ranging to give all interested parties the opportunity to participate.

Fishing communities and representative groups will have a further opportunity to input into the consultation process in the coming weeks when a policy framework document, outlining the emerging themes and priorities of the new policy, will be published for a period of written public consultation. I would encourage all interested groups and bodies to take this further opportunity to ensure that their views form part of the policy development process.