The committee will now consider the Supplementary Estimate for Vote 42 with the Minister for Rural and Community Development. The Aire and Aire Stáit and their officials are very welcome. I now invite the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, to make her opening statement.
Vote 42 - Rural and Community Development (Supplementary)
I appreciate the opportunity to present this request for a substantive and technical Supplementary Estimate for the Department of Rural and Community Development. There are quite a number of movements reflecting a number of schemes operated by my Department. The proposed Supplementary Estimate covers various areas which I will now set out. There is a substantive Supplementary Estimate for €11 million in current funding for Ukraine supports, with €10 million for the social inclusion and community activation programme and €1 million for volunteer centres. There will be movement of €16 million capital into subhead A4, rural supports, to meet demand under the local improvement scheme. The €16 million is made up of €14.3 million in capital funding originally allocated for subhead A7, rural regeneration and development; €500,000 in capital funding from subhead A8, islands; and €1.2 million in capital funding from subhead B10, libraries development.
There is movement of €6.175 million capital from the A7 rural regeneration and development subhead to B11 community enhancement programme to meet demand under the community centre investment fund; movement of €2 million capital from the A7 rural regeneration and development subhead to meet demand under the LEADER subhead; movement of €2 million capital from the A7 rural regeneration and development subhead to B4 for once-off funding of dog control infrastructure; movement of €1.258 million from current to capital within the B6 support for disadvantaged communities subhead, which funds the Dublin north-east inner-city initiative; and movement of €1.723 million from current to capital within the B8 PEACE subhead.
The substantive Supplementary Estimate of €11 million includes €10 million in additional funding for SICAP, which helps ensure appropriate supports for Ukrainian refugees, while protecting services to existing groups under the programme. This funding was agreed as part of budget 2023 but was not provided for in the Revised Estimate and is, therefore, now being dealt with through a Supplementary Estimate. To date in 2023, the €10 million under SICAP has helped local development companies support in excess of 6,300 Ukrainians and more than 70 community groups working with Ukrainians. The local development companies have also used this funding for more than 320 events and in excess of 180 children and family activities, all to help Ukrainians integrate into their local communities. The substantive Supplementary Estimate of €11 million also includes an additional €1 million for volunteering supports. This is being provided to help the network of 29 volunteer centres throughout the country to provide a range of community integration initiatives to support people arriving from Ukraine and volunteers working in the area.
Separately, there are also a number of technical supplementary adjustments which involve the reallocation of resources from one area to another. These all involve capital resources and are required to ensure the Department can put its resources to best use, as expenditure during the year differs from the original Estimate for an area. First, the original budget for the local improvement scheme was €12 million. This technical Supplementary Estimate will allow additional funding of €16 million for the scheme. This total funding of €28 million will allow improvements to more than 600 roads in 2023. As noted at the outset, the €16 million in savings mainly relates to funding previously allocated to the A7 rural regeneration and development subhead.
The next technical supplementary relates to the community centre investment fund. Under this scheme, funding of €45.8 million has been approved for 861 projects. Expenditure to date this year has been €20 million. It is proposed to transfer €6.175 million from the A7 rural regeneration and development subhead to the B11 community enhancement programme subhead to meet demand under the programme. This will bring total expenditure on the community centre investment fund in 2023 to €26.175 million.
Separately, the original Estimate for the LEADER programme in 2023 was for expenditure of €46 million. This now needs to increase to €48 million to meet the additional demand in 2023. This €2 million will be moved from the A7 rural regeneration and development subhead to the A5 LEADER programme to meet demand in the area.
Next, I intend to move savings of €2 million from the A7 rural regeneration and development subhead to the B4 SICAP subhead to provide once-off funding for dog control infrastructure. The funding is consistent with recommendations from a report published in March by a cross-government working group on the control of dogs, with eligible costs, including infrastructure, vehicles and equipment for dog control purposes.
There are two movements of funding within subheads, from current to capital, for the PEACE programme and Dublin north-east inner-city initiative. These movements reflect the fact that funding decisions are made external to the Department and so initial Estimates are amended as projects are approved.
With regard to the savings which are being utilised here, as I have made clear, the majority of the capital savings relate to the A7 subhead, which funds the rural regeneration and development fund, town and village renewal, and the outdoor recreation infrastructure scheme. Total expenditure across these three areas in the A7 subhead is expected to be €81 million, meaning a saving of €24.5 million on the funding available for 2023.
While I recognise the pandemic delayed a number of projected start dates and local authorities are under pressure on a number of fronts, the level of savings on the RRDF this year is disappointing. However, I acted quickly to make sure funding is put to good use and I have focused on ensuring delivery is accelerated. I have engaged with local authorities throughout the year to emphasise the need for much quicker delivery of RRDF projects and the importance of local authorities delivering on the commitments they make when they apply for funding. My officials met representatives of the CCMA just three weeks ago and again emphasised the importance of accelerated delivery if we are to maintain and grow our capital funding. There are currently 38 major RRDF projects on site with approved funding of €119 million, and this will ensure a strong flow of funding claims in the future. I am seeing projects completed regularly now, and my focus is on ensuring this flow of completions continues and that we all get the message out about the value of this investment in rural Ireland.
I thank the committee for taking the time to consider the Supplementary Estimate for my Department. I and the Minister of State, Deputy Joe O'Brien, are happy to answer any questions that might arise.
I thank the Minister. Does the Leas-Chathaoirleach, Deputy Ó Cathasaigh, have any questions?
I thank the Minister. I will begin by talking about some of the supports that are in place as part of the Ukrainian response. One of the subheads the Minister talked about provides resettlement assistance. Will she expand on that a little? There is a list as long as my arm so maybe we will go through them one by one.
My second question is related and is about all of the supports we are putting in place, such as the education supports, and the learning we are having in terms of the Ukrainian response, which is, in many senses, unprecedented and had to be almost instant. Are we putting any structures in place to harvest learnings and are we looking at it now even to refine the process as we do it, because we had to have this kind of instantaneous response, and streamline it should we be faced with a similar situation in the future where we have a large number of people coming into the country?
Our response at the moment is based on a learning from Covid. During Covid we had these local community response forums and that was the model that we, in a slightly different way, kick-started again at local authority level. We have community response forums that are operating at every local authority level now, initially in response to the Ukraine situation but which are also now working with international protection applicants.
Regarding the budget line, this is an additional €10 million. The beginning of it was 2022. After the initial inflow of people, we got an initial €5 million for SICAP and half a million for the volunteer centres for the second half of 2022. We doubled that for last year and that is going into next year as well, 2024. In essence, this allows us to put community workers on the ground who are already going into a structure of the local development companies under SICAP. SICAP is a well-established programme with 600 community workers around the country who had already been working in this space of people looking for protection. They were in a very good place and it was a very easy and quick plug-in to give SICAP additional funding.
The learning is ongoing. We have contact with the community response forums as well in terms of the issues that are coming up. They also feed back to other central government Departments in terms of GP services, education needs, and so on and so forth. The model is good but the struggle at the moment is accommodation, and that continues to be the case. That is the number one learning across government, that we need to build up our surge capacity, for want of a better term, to be able to cope with unexpected large inflows of people.
The Minister gave a clear indication of her view of the underspend on RRDF and I share her view. The rural regeneration and development fund exists for a reason. It does some outstanding work. The Minister visited Cappoquin and saw how that money can be put to good use if it is really focused and people are moving on with the plans. Are we seeing an underspend across the board or are some areas struggling to spend it for whatever reason? Is it just a capacity problem in the economy to deliver on these projects or have some people applied for projects that they were not in a position to build out in the period of time?
The flip side of that coin is that I understand the Minister not wanting to hand that money back, so a large chunk of it has gone into the local improvement scheme. I might not share the Minister's view on the spending on small roads across the country. I can give the Minister a context, before anybody makes an accusation, and invite her to drive the lane that I grew up on and that my parents still live on. In case anyone thinks I live on a perfectly marbled, Dublin 4 surface, I know very well the need for the LIS in many cases. The people on the lane would not club in to pay their part under the LIS so I am still trying to get chippings put into the various potholes, but that is another day's work. Whatever about the LIS and the roads, is there space to start putting some of this money into what the CLÁR programme used to do in relation to footpaths? I could point the Minister to Dunhill, just out the road from where I am living. The village has active travel funding that is being used to design a scheme which essentially involves a footpath that will bring people from Cois Coille into the school but it cannot access the next stage of the funding. If we have money coming back from RRDF, I would love to see that invested in those small rural towns and villages that need a top-up in terms of active travel infrastructure. When I talk about active travel infrastructure, I am really talking about footpaths to allow children to walk to school. While the Minister and Deputy Naughten might like the LIS a little more than I do, I would like to see that money flowing through the likes of a CLÁR scheme into those small measures that could really make a big difference in terms of providing active travel infrastructure throughout the country. There are two sides to the one question there.
Just to declare an interest, the seat I hold at the moment is the one that was held by the late Jack McQuillan, the man who brought a cul-de-sac roads or tertiary roads Bill through the House specifically to deal with this issue. I just wanted to declare that.
First, the Deputy asked me about the bigger schemes, which do present more challenges. Very ambitious applications come in and sometimes they just cannot deliver on them as quickly as they thought. Sometimes they would run into difficulties with the planning process, although they have to have planning permission now before they can get approved. We are trying to focus on projects that are as shovel ready as possible. Sometimes there are delays in procurement or there might be some changes to the design, often to make it better, and that is fair enough. There are a myriad of different reasons for projects not being delivered, and if you were looking for excuses, you would find plenty. I am putting the pressure on but I have to accept there is a fairly substantial workload in local authorities because they are delivering for housing, active travel and climate change. They are delivering a lot of things. I remember back in 2012 and 2013, the local authorities were at sea because they were not sure what their role was in a number of areas, but now they have plenty to do. They have a lot on their plate and they have to prioritise delivery themselves. That is why I am looking at this now, and if applicants do not have a record of delivery, that will be taken into consideration when we are allocating more money. If they can spend it, they will get it. If they submit fancy plans but they cannot deliver, that is no good to me. I want the money spent on the ground and I am going around different parts of the country now. I was down in Deputy Ó Cathasaigh's constituency, in Mount Congreve, to see the wonderful investment there. I visited St. Declan's Way and Cappoquin, which is doing rightly. It got a lot of investment and it needed it. I want to see the money spent and the pressure is on.
When it comes to the town and village fund, the allocations are smaller but that is going well. It is much quicker. Of course, with the bigger projects, the attention to detail has to be greater and procurement processes and so on kick in. With a heritage building, for example, applicants can run into a pile of trouble they did not think they would run into. Even with simple things like streetscape enhancement where we asked applicants to paint houses, some counties said they could not paint the houses before the deadline because the rain was so bad. It was washing the paint off the walls as soon as they got it up. What could we do in a case like that only tell them to wait for a dry day? There is no point in wasting the paint.
On lanes, the Deputy is from the south of the country and I am sure the condition of the roads is a lot better down in his county.
And there is less rain.
Up in my country-----
I invite the Minister to the Witches Lane, which is where I grew up, but she should make sure she is in the 4 x 4. She should not bring the-----
In our neck of the woods, even the witches cannot use the lanes.
I have no 4 x 4, but what I did have when I was growing up was a bicycle. I lived on a lane that was one mile long and there were potholes left, right and centre, and if I missed one, I was sure to hit the next one. I know all about lanes and I know there are problems when the milk lorry cannot get in to get the milk out, for example. There is a long list of lanes in every county that every Deputy raises with me, and when we do have additional funding, it is spent and it is making a difference. I see that it is making a difference in many areas. It is a very popular scheme in the rural areas where I live and where Deputy Naughten lives. There would be plenty of rain in his part of the country too.
I take the Deputy's point on footpaths. When first I was Minister in this area in 2016, I funded footpaths until they came out through my ears, and that is the truth, under the town and village renewal scheme. The next thing was, the footpaths were dug up and new footpaths put in and I said, "That is it; that is enough footpaths." The councils should be funding the footpaths and they should be putting them in right in the first place instead of digging them up two or three years later to put different stones in or whatever. I could not reward footpaths that would be replaced every couple of years because, to me, that was waste.
On the CLÁR programme, we have expanded it. I am always happy to look at changes. We fund things like biodiversity gardens, school playgrounds and improved disability access at GAA grounds and other sporting facilities. Sports bodies got money from the sports capital fund to do up their pitches, but there was nothing for the poor spectators and there was many a one that would like to go. We were able to fund that through CLÁR and it is popular. The good news is I will be announcing CLÁR funding in a few weeks. It is money that gets spent quickly.
I take the Deputy's point about the footpaths. They need to be kept and people need to be able to walk safely on them. They should also be easily accessible but there is an important role for the local authorities there. They must have some responsibilities themselves and footpaths are one such responsibility. That said, we will explore top-ups but it is important we try to deliver in the areas where a need has been identified.
If the Deputy gets a chance, he should have a word with the Minister for Transport. Maybe he could give me a few more bob and we can get rid of the long list of LIS projects and we would not have to be talking about them.
He might have heard similar concerns in terms of footpaths around my county as well.
I do not have any lanes and cannot engage in one-upmanship with anyone. In any event, I have two questions. First, is there going to be another round of community halls funding this year?
We had a discussion recently in the context of CLÁR and RAPID programmes. Obviously the RAPID programme is not currently in operation, but one contributor, who may have been from the Western Development Commission, was talking about the approach within RAPID to community needs assessments. There were people who, through the RAPID programme, were in a position to draw together the community and plan strategically with the community. This was in the context of communities making applications for funding for different capital projects and projects of different kinds. The point was made, and it was a good one, that sometimes requests for funding are not coherent and are not based on a thought-through plan of what a community needs. In my own community in Togher, for example, there would have been, as part of the RAPID process, a substantial number of meetings on a community needs plan. That was at least 15 if not 20 years ago.
Currently there is not any such approach, at least in urban areas. Maybe there is something through CLÁR. There is not an infrastructure support or anything like that from the Department to facilitate that kind of planning. It is not necessarily a significant budgetary ask but I would like the Minister to consider it.
I would like to clarify something regarding a question I had last Tuesday. I had to return to Cork unexpectedly and Deputy Paul Donnelly took the question on my behalf. It relates to library funding. The response the Minister gave is that there is maximum funding of €3 million. It was unclear to me if that is the entire pot of funding for capital. The answer also suggested that the maximum value of the project would be €500,000. Can you clarify what precisely is available for individual library capital projects?
I will answer the library one first. We have a library fund all right, and that is separate. However, a lot of funding for libraries is coming through the rural regeneration fund. That is to address dereliction and issues in towns where we can repurpose old buildings and put them into 21st century use. We find that where there is a need for a new library, a lot of funding applications are being made through the rural regeneration and development fund. That applies to towns with populations up to 10,000. I suppose the library fund for towns in excess of that may be the area the Deputy is talking about. We have spent about €57 million to develop and deliver 19 libraries across rural Ireland including in Trim, Virginia and Portlaoise. I am going to one in Kinsale next week. We had one in Castleblayney. These are old buildings that have been taken back and repurposed. There was a gate lodge in Castleblayney. The Trim one was an old church. The one in Portlaoise was an old department store. They are centre-of-town buildings. The library is not just about books as you and I well know. It is all about community. There are loads of things happening in our libraries. They are sort of a centre in the town and bring people in. The local authorities also provide funding so we usually provide matched funding on that. I will come back to the Deputy on the Cork city piece. They can apply under the urban regeneration development fund, which is for the bigger towns. There is an opportunity there for the city to apply for library funding. It is the regeneration piece where a lot of them move in. The smaller grant is then for the likes of refurbishment of the existing libraries because it would not cost as much.
Okay. I will give you the context. It is in the Mahon area. The south east of the city does not currently have a library. Mahon would have been a RAPID area. There is substantial disadvantage there. The library is proposed to be a new build on an existing school site. The school could avail of it but it would have its own entrance and would be open to the public. It is going to planning fairly shortly. It is a new build. Would it be possible to apply for urban regeneration funding for a scheme like that?
If it is part of a whole plan for regeneration of an area, a library is a very obvious one to put in it. It would be up to the local authority to decide whether that would be part of their plan. I have lost my bit of paper with the Deputy's questions, sorry.
I can come in on one of the points on funds that are dedicated to different areas. Each lot area, each area that a local development company looks after, gets a SICAP allocation based on the deprivation index and based on the level of deprivation in that area. I opened a new programme the year before last, the Empowering Communities programme, which is even more focused on those areas that are most deprived. We did a filter across the country in terms of those really small areas, literally estates, that were top or bottom of the list, however you want to look at it in terms of being the most deprived. We put extra resourcing and people in there as well. The Empowering Communities programme is an approach we would like to grow going forward. We have the new deprivation index now as well that will tell us even more about those places around the country, and in Cork city as well, which I know need extra resourcing in terms of community workers at least.
I will come back in there. There are town teams in every town as the Deputy knows. We have appointed town regeneration officers. They are meant to look at the towns and engage with communities and businesses and help them to develop their plans for their particular town. The officers are in place now. We are very much about a bottom-up approach. Sometimes I know local authorities employ consultants to engage with communities and some of them are very good. However, it is important there is real engagement. There is no point in a consultant coming in with a report that has been written for some other town and kind of imposing it. I am very much against that. You have to get in there and you have to understand the demands of communities. We want to help them. I am always saying this. We want to help them to realise their vision for their area. They know what they want. You know what you need in your home area. I do not know that. It is about getting that real engagement with people. I hate to hear some people coming back and saying they did not really get a chance. That is not what we are about. We want to see that with the local authorities. The LEADER programme is very good at building capacity within communities so they can have that conversation and identify what they want.
On the community centre investment fund, that was a very popular fund. I had €20 million for it and that is why I have moved money into it. We have allocated funding for 862 projects to the value of €45.8 million. There are three different categories. That is the existing one. It is so popular that I have to talk to the Department of public expenditure and reform when it comes to the national development plan to see if I can get more money. It really has been a huge success. They are delivering. The communities are getting out there and getting the projects delivered on the ground. They are doing their build and their extension. A lot of the money was to upgrade heating, put in solar panels, make it more efficient and reduce the running cost by bringing in different forms of solar energy, insulation and so on. It is going well.
We announced the new build measure. We have an allocation in the budget for that. We have 22 projects applied for. That has closed - the one that is open now is the rural regeneration scheme. We have projects to the value of €70 million looking for grants from us of €59 million. We are going through them at the minute. We have to assess them and we will see where we go with that. We are assessing the 22 applications. It is expected the announcement will be made on the successful projects in quarter 1 of 2024. I think the community centre investment fund is a very good fund but I would like to see this one a bit further down the line before I announce another one. I think that is all the questions covered.
If I can come in with two more brief points, it was popular and other communities are now saying they we might like a go at it. I am sure you will make an announcement if and when that is going to come but at the minute there is nothing announced. The Minister is not saying there will not be another round but there is nothing at this moment.
On community recognition funding, which I think will happen again this year, if it is happening again will the criteria be the same? In some areas it seems to have been very well targeted whereas in others it did not seem to have been so much. The experience of Cork was good.
From speaking to colleagues, it could have been a bit more targeted in places, so I would be grateful if the Minister could answer that as well.
It was once-off funding of €50 million. Of that, €30 million was to be spent in 2023, and €20 million is to be spent next year because some of these were big enough projects. It requires a bit of a lead-in time. Expecting them all to be spent within a year was nigh impossible. We have the €50 million, and there will be €30 million this year and €20 million next year.
We will look at another one. If any issues were found in the last one, I am happy to hear them. We rolled it out through the local authorities, so these projects are driven by the local authorities. However, maybe there are learnings on how we can be more targeted in supporting the communities that went beyond the call of duty in providing accommodation and support for both Ukrainians and international protection applicants. They deserve to be recognised and supported. I am happy to hear views. I have heard a few comments on it. Where we can make improvements, I am happy to look at it. At the end of the day we are all trying to do the same thing here in helping the communities.
I am sure it takes a total mental adjustment for the Minister to move from the billions in the Department of Social Protection. When she looks at this Supplementary Estimate, she might think there are a whole lot of figures missing because we are dealing with €2 million here and €1 million there, or €10 million and €16 million, whereas the other Supplementary Estimate runs into hundreds of millions and billions. It must be stressed that for a Department with a very small budget, it is crucially - equally - important. I think the total spend is €384 million. In the greater scheme of things, compared to the Minister's other Department, it is a very small sum. Going 10% up on that is a huge boon, whereas 10% down would be a huge loss. It is very sensitive to very small money. What I think could also be said is that very small extra money makes a disproportionately big difference.
I did not see any mention of the community services programme. Has it come in just bang on the budget saving, and how are the numbers on that? That scheme should be aggressively progressed. It provides a massive range of services where they would not be fully economical but there is a reasonable income. Some are more economical than others. The tourism ones tend to be quite economic but they still would not work in a lot of the more rural areas without the support of the scheme. There are other ones where there is a much lower level of income but they all serve huge purposes.
The Minister has mentioned that she is investing hugely in community centres, and we all agree with that. Unless each one of these large community centres has adequate staffing under the community services programme, we are not using them to their potential. They should be open in the morning from 8 o'clock, and they should be closed between 9 o'clock and 11 o'clock at night. That requires staff, however. Why are people on jobseekers' allowance when they could be providing fantastic services through the day, and putting a comprehensive programme in place?
My second point just shows how the need arises. I got a phone call last week telling me that the only shop on the island of Inishbofin has been closed. The community has taken responsibility for the shop because it is just not economical to run a shop commercially on a small island, particularly in the winter. I understand they will be looking to extend the community services programme to cover this. They already have the structure and programme there but it will probably take a few extra full-time equivalents, or FTEs as they are called. Plugging that kind of gap is positive, and crosses the Minister's responsibilities in both of her Departments. We need to be speedy about something like that.
On the larger community centres, the applications are in. Could the Minister indicate when that is going to be rolled out?
On LEADER, the Minister said there is €2 million more this year. I take it that comes out of the whole maw of the money from 2022 to 2027. Does that mean that when the new LEADER gets up and going, they are going to be €2 million shorter on the capital end? They are still running this interim programme. It is very hard to see with LEADER whether it is administration or capital because I think it is all classified as capital, even the administration costs. The Minister might clarify that.
When I went up to do something in my office, I was listening to my good colleague, the Leas-Chathaoirleach of the coiste, about the local improvement scheme, LIS. He obviously has not read all of the Supplementary Estimates because the Department of Transport is providing €50 million extra for active travel, bringing the total amount for active travel up to €347 million. My only argument about LIS is that we still do not have enough, and I think the Minister knows that. It is a disgrace that the Department of Transport does not. In the previous iteration, when the Department of Rural and Community Development funded the LIS, the arrangement in the CLÁR areas was that we would meet it euro for euro. If it did not put the money in, we would not.
It would be right for me once again to say - I know the Minister cannot utterly control this - that it is incumbent on the Department of Transport to ensure everybody has a road to their house. The one change I would like to see to that scheme is where we would have clusters of houses on roads that always existed but there might not be two herd owners anymore on them because of consolidation in farming, and so on, in rural areas. While I accept that in places like Monaghan and Meath it is more a farmers' scheme, in the west of Ireland the construction has changed. It is time we dealt with that issue and said that if there are two more houses on a road, it can be considered for the scheme. It would then be up to the local authority to prioritise it by genuine need. I ask the Minister to do that.
Can the Minister confirm whether the ring-fenced fund for the islands will be there next year? That was very useful, and there has been some absolutely unbelievable work out of it.
Finally, what one will find when one does LIS roads is that a lot of these are where people choose to walk as well, whether they are tourists, particularly in my constituency, or the locals for recreation. They are really 30 km/h speed roads, regardless of whether one wants that to be the case, because they are not good enough to do anything further. It is safe to walk on them, and so on. The idea that they are not a facility for active travel would be to totally misunderstand them. I would love the Minister to see what is probably the most spectacular road she has funded this year. It is in Inis Meáin, and they call it Bóthar an Dúna because it goes past Dún Chonchúir, the prehistoric fort. There was an absolutely miraculous job done on it. It goes from near the church on the island right to the back of the island, to the uninhabited part. It gets access to all the farmland - that is true - but it also has access for tourists. It is a part of the island that very few tourists actually see. The Minister should go down and open it, as a flagship project she has done.
I would like to say one thing about every euro the Minister spent on LIS. It is so bad in Galway that when the Minister opened a scheme in 2021, or whenever it was opened last, they got so many applications they have taken no more applications since. It is that bad. I would say I am not the only one who is facing that.
No, sadly, Deputy Ó Cuív is not the only one.
My final question or issue regards the rural regeneration fund. My understanding was that this fund was introduced to do totemic projects around rural Ireland, and that the fund was €500 million. Is that correct?
It was €1 billion.
A billion?
Better still. One was €500 million and the other was €1 billion or something. In hard cash paid out, what have we spent to date? How many years has the scheme been up and running? Ultimately, it is the payout that counts. Should we be opening it up more quickly in order to get more projects into the pipeline? Projects are very slow to get off the ground. There are issues that arise with cost variations and so on. My view is that we need to get it done.
There is a lot of talk about the cost of capital. Capital looks very expensive now. In hindsight, however, it always looks very cheap. In about ten or 15 years' time, the cost of capital development now will look cheap because it does not go down over time. There may be a small dip over a year or two, but then they rise higher than ever. If we want to save money on capital expenditure, we should spend it now. Ultimately, delays cost us more and more money.
Rural regeneration and development funding has been agreed for the passing loop in Oranmore.
It has.
If Galway and Mayo county councils came to the Department with a proposal to do all of the engineering studies on the railway line between Athenry and Claremorris, would it consider that for the rural regeneration and development fund? It would be a bold statement for the west. It is a rural area that is not in my constituency, but it is a totemic project that the west badly needs. We need to get to the point where we know exactly what has to be done. It is an existing railway line in State ownership. There are tracks, which cannot be used. It is not a question of having to acquire anything. We could do all of the survey work and so on regarding what is required to make the service operational in a modern context for railway lines. Dargan built the piece between Athenry and Tuam to an incredibly high standard. I understand there is one level crossing on the line. It is a fantastic railway line, built to the highest national standards. North of that, there are more basic types of railway line. It is all full gauge. I would be interested in hearing the views of the Minister on whether the rural regeneration and development fund would be used to make an even bolder statement than it has made up to now and make a real impact.
CLÁR is a fine scheme, but some basic services in rural Ireland do not exist and we will not get them any day soon. The Department, whether through the islands funds or CLÁR funding, should use the money on a leveraged basis as was done previously to jiggle up Departments in order to deal with issues where it has been stated that a cost-benefit analysis does not stand up. I have the same view on islands. The islands capital fund should be used to get agencies that are dragging their feet and have said there is not a critical mass in favour of projects.
Fair play to the Government. I backed it at the time. Again, I went against what my party said about rural broadband, and it won. The rural broadband scheme is absolutely fantastic in principle and practice. LIS should bring a road to every house in the country. The electricity supply goes to every house in the country. We now need water to every house in the country. This is basic rural living. I am excluding those with group water schemes and those that are part of recognised group water schemes. 10% of houses are dependent on private sources and we do not know how good those sources are. The Department should consider co-funding a scheme to accelerate this with the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage.
The Minister's colleague instituted a policy to introduce sewerage schemes in towns. What will happen is that the larger on-sewer towns in stronger areas will get services and smaller places that are dying will die even more quickly. The Department has to be disruptive. That is the whole idea of having a Department for rural areas rather than leaving things to a vertical divide. The Minister should decide to co-fund schemes, but only for very small places.
I refer to rural depopulation. If we build five or ten houses in every small village which has a church, shop and school and they all have a wastewater system, we will certainly find people going back to those areas because they would be able to get a house, whether they were from the area. I ask the Minister to consider whether the Department should perhaps get a bit more disruptive of the normal way of doing things which will always leave the most rural and isolated areas to the last. The census figures show that the population is growing hugely in some areas, but around the margins.
Finally, can I make one more comment?
No. I have heard the word "finally" nine times.
Has the Department studied the most recent census? Has it ascertained which parts of the country have, despite a huge rise in overall population, a declining population? I thank the Cathaoirleach for his indulgence.
There was a lot of indulgence. On wastewater treatment, the Deputy has made a very valid point, in particular regarding County Galway. One of the most deplorable situations I have seen is in County Galway. The applications currently with the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage are for sewerage schemes in towns like Craughwell. Smaller villages like Caltra, Castleblakeney and Kilconnell, which have raw sewage running down their main streets, are not being considered for schemes. In Creggs, a site has been provided by the community, but it will never see a wastewater treatment facility under the current regime. This is an issue that needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency.
I will get the Minister of State, Deputy O'Brien, to come in on the community services programme. While this is fresh in my mind, I will try to answer as many questions as I can. I will start with the last one. CLÁR money and money for the islands will be ring-fenced. It is a great idea. I was on Inishmaan and did not get back this summer, but I hope to make my way there again next summer. It is the same in Arranmore, where I went one day when I was on holiday. Somebody heard I was coming, got me into a jeep and drove me the whole way to the lighthouse. The road was a right mess. I told the person who had driven me on it that they were right and that we needed to fix it. We put a lot of work into it with Donegal County Council. There is no point in fixing roads if there is nobody maintaining them. The drains need to be emptied and kept clear because if we do not do that the roads will disintegrate again.
The committee went on a minibus on that very road to inspect the work first time. An excellent job was done on it. We visited the lighthouse and saw first-hand the excellent work the Department funded and completed.
In fairness, it is hard to beat seeing it in its worst state. We know there is a real problem. We can read all of the descriptions, but we need to see it. I will get to Inishmaan if I have a chance. I believe ring-fenced funding for LIS for the islands is a good thing. We will keep that in place in 2024.
I take the Deputy's point on CLÁR. Of course it is limited.
That is why I move away from statements such as "I think we have done enough in this area and maybe it is time to move on to a different area". I absolutely understand the need for wastewater treatment plants in small villages. In small communities, maybe on the outskirts of a town, there used to be a grant you could apply for. It was a community sewerage scheme. I do not know if that is still there in the Department of housing. I have just been told it is gone. It was useful. I helped people get that one and it sorted out a lot of problems with leaky septic tanks and so on. People are prepared to pay a few bob to get-----
CLÁR funding made that possible because we topped it up.
I take the Deputy's point. This has been raised with me, and both the Deputy and the Cathaoirleach have said to me, as have others, that we badly need wastewater treatment plants in the villages. I will take a look to see what we can do. The maximum grant under CLÁR is €50,000. We can look at it and see if there is any way we could use that money to leverage more money from the Department of housing, which is where it will have to come from, and to see if we can do some small schemes. There is a good few people who would like to be able to live in the villages if they had a serviced site there. That is it.
Deputy Ó Cuív also mentioned the railway line from Athenry to Claremorris. I absolutely agree that we should encourage joint applications from local authorities for strategic infrastructure. Deputy Ó Cuív would be very familiar with the Ulster Canal. That is a good example. It is a big infrastructure project across three counties, namely, Monaghan, Fermanagh and Cavan. In fairness to the Deputy, he saw the value of it and then was able to get it moved on. They are working on that and it will make a difference not just to the town but to the whole region. I take his point about the railway line from Athenry to Claremorris. We can look at how we can support that with a feasibility study or something, but there are a lot of applications coming in. I will go on now about the underspend in the RRDF, and it is not for the want of reminding local authorities that they need to spend it. What we have spent to date on the RRDF is €140.5 million, with the spend this year likely to be around €51 million. There is over €260 million in approvals outstanding at the minute. There are a few counties - I will be honest with the committee - that sent in the most ambitious, beautiful plans and they were allocated the funding because their applications stood up but they have not spent a lot of money on the ground. When I am doing the next round, if they have not spent it, I will not give them any more because I am not into this carry-on whereby councils clock up money. They need to spend it. It does not need to sit anywhere. I do not want to be holding on to it. I want it spent. That is what we want to see - impact on the ground - so when they get their applications in, they should not sit on them, they should move on them.
There are other reasons relating to the RRDF, including supply of labour, getting contractors, complex projects, maybe heritage projects that run into problems or difficulties they were not expecting. You do not get money now unless you have planning. That is it. You can get the category 2 funding to help you progress to category 1. The railway line could possibly come under category 2 funding. You can get up to €500,000 under that, and that could get you to put the design in place, put the plans together, employ the consultants, do the ground work and then move to the next one. I have just thought of that. That might be where we need to look in that regard.
There are a lot of demands on local authorities. There is no doubt about it. There is the housing Department and all the other Departments putting pressure on them to spend the money on different projects. We have a very good relationship with them and work closely with them. The staff in my Department continually talk to local authorities, and if there are any problems, we try to iron them out quickly to get progress, but they have to prioritise delivery. My colleague, the Minister for housing, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, is looking for them to deliver the houses and I am looking for them to deliver the town centre projects and the renewal of the town centres and so on. Having said that, though, if you do not spend it, you are not getting any more.
We have approved, in total, 215 projects under RRDF to a total value of €412 million. The spend to date is €140 million. I wish it were more because when you go out and see the finished projects, they are fantastic. There is no doubt about it. They make a real change to communities and, in particular, town centres.
I have said we are the smallest Department with the biggest impact. The value of a small grant was never lost on me. I will tell the committee a story I think I might have told before. I had to ring somebody one time about a small grant. I think it was €8,000 or €9,000. It could have been €10,000. It was not a big grant. They were very pleased. I cannot even remember what it was for. They said to me, "I would be a long time standing at traffic lights in Monaghan before I would get €10,000." That is the value to communities, and it is absolutely true. We should never forget that these small differences can make a big impact on our communities the length and breadth of the country.
As regards the LIS, I do not know if Deputy Ó Cuív heard me, but I lived on a long lane when I was growing up. It was a mile long and full of potholes. I know the benefit of an LIS project. The Deputy is absolutely right that there are a lot of LIS projects and people are using them now for walkways because they are safe. There is an element of active travel, and some of them may go past a lake or past various amenities and they are lovely places to walk. I take the Deputy's point about the two herd numbers. Sometimes, in some areas, it is hard to meet those criteria, but I will be honest with him. I was trying to clear some of the backlog before I started to change the criteria because if I do the latter, I will just end up with a longer list. Sometimes people despair and wonder will they ever get their lane done. If I had more money for LIS projects, I would have no problem expanding the scheme further.
Deputy Ó Cuív asked me about LEADER money. I can tell him now that LEADER does not reduce the overall funding. It is just a matter of the timing of the bills for the projects. A new LEADER programme will come in next year. We are going through that process at the minute to select the local action groups to deliver the 2023-27 programme. As regards the local development strategies which were submitted by the applicants, lags are currently being assessed. To date, lags in 12 subregional areas have been notified. They have been approved by the independent selection committee established to adjudicate on the strategy submitted by the applicant groups. The other ones are being considered by the committee.
I think I have covered nearly everything in terms of the questions I was asked, except for the last one, which relates to the CSO census. All rural areas are experiencing rises in population. The Our Rural Future policy recognises the diversity of rural areas. It also allows me to hold all the other Departments' toes to the fire and toast them. Some of them are delivering, and I say to them that they need to deliver. I know healthcare on islands is challenging, as is the provision of teachers in schools, but when you look at the overall improvement in rural Ireland, there are more people working there and the population is increasing. I know there are challenges, and there will always be challenges and we try to deal with them, but when I go out to rural communities I think there is a positivity out there. There is a new sense of hope in rural Ireland that we did not have a number of years ago, and we need to build on that and be positive. I love living in rural Ireland. I would not dream of living anywhere else and I would like other people to enjoy the same pleasures that the Deputy and I and others have by living in the country.
Yes, but what we are finding, taking my constituency and Connemara, is that there are growing populations in the parts from which it is possible to commute to Galway. My understanding is that beyond a place called Camas, in Rosmuck, which the Minister will have heard of, Kilkieran, Carna, Roundstone and Ballyconneely, around that big circle, in Recess and around Clifden, populations are in decline.
I suggest that we will probably find the same in west Mayo. It is growing in and around Castlebar, Claremorris and Ballina, but once you get out of the drag of the commuter belt, which is about 50 km, you go over a cliff. We still have that challenge. I would say we might find the same thing in Roscommon. Has the Department done this mapping exercise on a sub-county basis, on an electoral district basis or just above the electoral district level to see what is gaining and what is losing? It is not uniform. It would be surprising if it was. It is funny, given there are so many pressures and problems in and around the urban areas. I see it every day. In one half of my constituency the schools are not big enough, there is too much traffic, we do not have houses and we do not have enough childcare places. In the other half of the constituency, we have the facilities. The Minister is dead right. I live in rural Ireland. I part I live in is just about stable. It is a fantastic place to live and I would not choose to live anywhere else, even though I am city-born, city-bred and city-educated. The point is that these areas have the capacity to take this growth in population. It is only counteracting the voids of the empty classrooms and so on. On the whole, we could do with reversing the trend. I think it would be very interesting and useful for us to have that mapped and to look at it. Perhaps the committee could examine the issue as well.
I thank the Deputy. We have an evaluation unit in the Department. We are working with the ESRI and the CSO. We use evidence for policies and schemes. Pobal is updating its data. Perhaps it could play a role in this as well.
Yes, but-----
Deputy, let the Minister finish. We only have nine minutes. I know that Pobal is doing some work in this area and that tremendous work is being done in the All-Island Research Observatory, AIRO, in Maynooth as well. I am sure it is something that the committee could engage on further with Maynooth University and Pobal to deal with it. I think it would be useful.
Very briefly,-----
I need to let the Minister finish.
In fairness, we have looked at reducing the co-financing rate to 10% for the Border and western regional area. We have reduced that for local authorities to try to encourage and help in an area that, to be fair, is not doing as well as some of the other areas across the country.
I think I have covered all of the questions that I was asked. I take the point made about water. I wanted it to be extended to people that have wells. I assure members that there are a lot of costs to operating a private well. There are treatments and all sorts of things you have to do.
I will hand over to the Minister of State, who will talk about the community services programme, CSP.
Briefly on the CSP, prior to this year the salary contributions to the 400+ community services programmes were on a flat rate. They all got the same contributions, whether they were one of the projects that had good revenue-generating capacity like the tourism ones that were mentioned, or a community centre in a deprived area. That was not ideal, particularly for the community centres in deprived areas. We restructured and there are three different layers of payment now. We got a budget increase in last year's budget in order to do that. We got €3.5 million in additional funding, which gives us the €52.4 million of steady funding this year to allow us to better support those community services programmes that have a higher need. We are growing it. We will be announcing 14 new projects in the next couple of weeks as well. We have a bigger group that we gathered when we opened the window for new applicants earlier this year. We are assessing them at the moment and we will be making announcements on them further into 2024.
We can look in a more flexible way at those projects that are already in the CSP and are looking for additional staff. We had issues last year with filling vacancies. There are quite a few vacancies across the CSP, but we are committed to growing it. We will be doing that in the next couple of weeks and next year as well.
I have two brief questions for the Minister. The first relates to the digital innovation fund that was run by her Department. We had a first round of funding in relation to that. There are a number of projects that came through the first round of funding that now need to be scaled up in the second phase. We were promised a second phase in relation to it but we still do not know what is happening with it. I am not going ask the Minister to respond on the hoof in relation to it, but I would be grateful if she could come back to the committee on that funding programme.
The second point, and the Minister might respond to us if she can, is that €2 million has been allocated under the rural regeneration subhead to deal with the control of dogs. We have spent the last six months in this House and in these committees talking about TV licences and the enforcement of TV licences. There has been very little going on in terms of the enforcement of the dog licence. Every week, about five flocks of sheep are being worried by stray dogs in this country. On top of that, we have heard reports of the horrendous assaults on children in this country and a lack of enforcement of the Control of Dogs Act. I think there needs to be more focus on this than on worrying about prosecuting people in relation to TV licences. We need to look at dogs that can cause harm - very serious economic harm and also harm to animals and human beings. We need to see greater focus on enforcement in relation to this.
I commend the Minister on bringing forward this allocation, but it is important that the local authorities around the country are providing the resources to the staff to enforce the Act and ensure it is actually enforced. One of the basic responsibilities of local authorities in this country is to enforce the particular provisions which, because of the lack of engagement, are causing a threat to the lives of both humans and animals.
On the issue of dogs, a couple of weeks ago I outlined that fines under the Control of Dogs Act will increase from 1 December. Previously, all fines were €100, regardless of how serious the offence was. We now have a fine of €300, and multiple fines can be issued at the same time. The Cathaoirleach is dead right. If we are not out there and we do not have dog wardens making sure that people are punished for not keeping their dogs under control, it is no good. There are a couple of Departments involved in this, my Department and the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. It is responsible for the dog wardens. That extra €2 million was to give them more money to buy vans. I cannot pay them because the area is not under my Department, but I have been speaking to the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage about it. The Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine and I set up a working group to look at what we are going to do regarding the review of the Control of Dogs Act and the breeding establishment legislation.
On the fines, there are more serious fines, and I am going to increase them as far as I can. I got advice from the Attorney General on the matter. I would have increased the fines to more than €300, but I was told that was as far as I could go. There are other fines that I will be bringing in, and I will be looking at passing legislation for that. I am setting up a stakeholder group that will include everybody, from the dog shelters to the societies that help people in supporting, training and looking after their dogs. I will be including representatives of the NARCG, the games people. I will also be bringing in the farmers. I am bringing them all into one committee where they can sit down and come up with recommendations on how we are going to deal with this problem. I have seen sheep that were savaged by dogs and believe me, it is not a sight to behold. It is desperate. That is bad, but it is worse when you see what happened the children that were attacked by dogs. I read in the paper that a man died because a dog bit him, and we heard what happened in England with the XL bully dog. There are people that are breeding dogs that are weapons of intimidation. That is wrong and it should not be happening. We do not ban dogs in this country. We have a list of restricted breeds. If you have a restricted breed, you are obliged to follow certain rules. When the committee sits, if it wants to come up with that recommendations that particular dogs will be banned, I have no problem with doing it. That is the truth. I know the Cathaoirleach feels the same way.
We are also going to do a communications campaign on responsible dog ownership because God knows, sometimes it is not the poor dog, but the person that owns the dog, who is at fault.
They need to be held to account and to treat the dog properly. The Department will work closely with the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and we will deliver the targeted campaign as early as possible in 2024. The local authorities are responsible for enforcement. Some of them say they do not have enough dog wardens. I have spoken to the Minister, Deputy Darragh O’Brien, and I think he is open to increasing the number of dog wardens. It is an issue. We need to sort it out and that is what we are trying to do. It is the same when there are a couple of Departments.
Regarding digital projects, they are funded under A6. There is €3.4 million available for a range of activities. We had the connected hubs fund, which was very welcome. We were able to help some of the digital hubs and the remote working hubs upgrade their facilities, whether it was to put in extra equipment or buy the pods and different things. We spent a good few bob on that. Today, as we speak, there is a digital hub conference going on, looking at how we move forward, how we make sure they are sustainable, how we manage them, how we get access to them and how we continue to make sure that remote working, which has been a game-changer for rural Ireland and there is no doubt about that, does not slip away from us. We need to consolidate what we have, see how we can make it better and make sure more people are using our remote working hubs. We need to allay the fears of employers. Sometimes, some people think that if they cannot see their employees, it means the employees are not working. That is not the case. In the majority of cases, people can be more productive when they are working from home. They are spending less time stressed out on the road and all the rest. It is about how we continue to build on that and support employers and employees to embrace the new digital word that we live in. Sin é.
When working with dog owners on responsible ownership, I hope the issue of dog fouling is also addressed. It is a scourge on footpaths throughout the country. What is going on is absolutely appalling. It is a lack of enforcement. A small level of enforcement would do a lot. If people own a dog, they have to clean up after it, full stop. Instead, often the dogs are fouling outside the door of elderly, older and vulnerable people. They are left to clean up after someone else’s dog that has fouled on their footpath. It is completely unacceptable.
I thank the Minister and the Minister of State, Deputy O’Brien, for their engagement. I also thank the officials. That concludes the business in public session. I thank the Minister, the Minister of State and their officials for participating today.