Departmental Policies

3. Deputy Conor D. McGuinness asked the Minister for Rural and Community Development and the Gaeltacht when he expects the next iteration of Our Rural Future to be launched; and the way in which the Government intends to ensure that its rural development commitments are supported by adequate resources, measurable actions and clear delivery timelines. [73148/26]

Táim ag cur na ceiste seo thar ceann an Teachta McGuinness. It is to ask the Minister when he expects the next iteration of Our Rural Future to be launched and the way in which the Government intends to ensure that rural development commitments are supported by adequate resources, measurable actions and clear delivery timetables, in consideration of the budget that was announced only last week.

Since its launch in 2021, Our Rural Future has delivered vital investment and supports, strengthened local economies and improved the quality of life across rural Ireland. Significant achievements include improvements in digital connectivity through the delivery of the national broadband plan, the development of a national network of over 400 remote working hubs, improvements in essential services and a sustained expansion in our investment across all schemes included in my Department's rural development investment programme. The next iteration of Our Rural Future for the period to 2031 will be published by the Government in the coming weeks. It will be built on the considerable progress and investment I have referenced to date, but it will also provide a new framework for the next phase of rural development. The development of the new policy is being informed by an extensive public and stakeholder consultation process, which took place throughout 2025 and gathered the views of well over 2,000 participants. Informed by the results of the consultation, but also by an independent OECD rural policy review, the new policy will be based around five interconnected policy pillars focusing on rural places, rural services, rural communities, the rural economy and the rural environment. In addition to setting out key priorities in each pillar, a series of ambitious, clear and practical actions will be outlined in an accompanying action plan covering the initial period until the end of 2028. Each action will have a designated lead delivery body and a clearly defined reporting timeline. Importantly, the ambition of Our Rural Future will continue to be backed by substantial Government investment. I am happy, along with the Minister of State, Deputy Buttimer, to confirm a total allocation of €628 million for our Department in budget 2027. This allocation will help to ensure that our Department continues to deliver projects of real impact across communities in Ireland and, in particular, rural communities. The policy will continue the whole-of-government approach and the investments through our Department will be complemented by an array of funding streams across Government.

The draft sustainable rural and Gaeltacht housing national planning statement, which we spoke about earlier, still leaves many young people locked out of building on family land. While we expect movement in the document, there is no mention of affordable housing. If the new document does not include and deal with affordable housing, one of the biggest single obstacles to securing a rural future will remain. The last document lacked any concrete timetables and goals on infrastructural deficits in rural Ireland. The Minister has set out that the new document will have those, which we welcome. Hopefully, there will be achievable goals and the funding will match each individual goal because there is no point in having a goal if the funding has not been provided. We also need to consider how we encourage or help those who are working from home, especially in rural Ireland.

I can assure the Deputy that we work very closely with the Minister, Deputy Browne, on the rural planning guidelines. I welcome them. They have brought consistency and stability to rural planning and, as we discussed earlier, we have some work to do on the Gaeltacht piece, which we will do in the coming weeks. The success of the croí cónaithe grants, introduced by the then Minister for housing, Deputy O'Brien, and of the vacant house grants, introduced by the current Minister, Deputy Browne, means I am seeing houses being opened up across the country that I genuinely have not seen open for generations. As I said, 400 working hubs are now connected and give people a chance to work from high-quality locations in rural areas right across the country. Many of those hubs are in community ownership and are run by community organisations. We are assessing applications under the RRDF, the community centre investment fund, the town and village renewal scheme and the outdoor recreation and infrastructure scheme. These schemes are making a capital difference right across rural Ireland. The OECD, in its work for us analysing Our Rural Future, has pointed to the successes of the strategy. It has also pointed to the need to use rural intelligence and rural data and highlighted the fact that we can integrate more closely with the CSO classification for rural areas, which we will be doing in the new process.

Yesterday we saw a strike by 300,000 public sector workers throughout the country, many of whom are living in rural Ireland. A lot of them travel to work in the cities and we see the traffic jams that sometimes come as a consequence. It is imperative that there is a greater concentration in the strategy on the 400 hubs the Minister mentioned, specifically to allow people not just to work from home but to work from their home village or home town, so that the concentration is there rather than encouraging people to isolate themselves in their own homes. Is that strategy going to be rolled out at pace? That is the key issue, rather than whether it is mentioned in a strategy document. What is the document going to do to ensure that the physical infrastructure is there so that the homes the Minister is talking about can be developed at pace?

The national broadband plan is running ahead of schedule and is on budget. It will ensure that many rural areas have the highest quality connectivity. Indeed, in some areas it is higher than some of our urban centres. The 400 remote working hubs are dispersed right across the country and some of those include the gteics being rolled out by Údarás, which give high-quality space for people to come together with secure technology in a very professional space rather than working in an isolated fashion. It has been pointed out that has been hugely successful and I would encourage all employers to engage with their employees to give them the opportunity to work on that. Since 2020, we have invested more than €1 billion under the rural development investment programme in many high-scale infrastructure projects in rural areas, making them safer and better places to work in. The success of previous decentralisation programmes is evident in my other Department, the Department of Social Protection. The spine of our operation is in places such as Longford, Buncrana, and Letterkenny. In my own home town of Ballina, we have the RSA and the Department of housing, giving people the chance to stay at home, work at home, build their families and more importantly, build communities.