Departmental Programmes Dail Éireann — 2026-07-14 ============================================================ Conor D. McGuinness (SF), Waterford Gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire as sin. On the ground, in rural areas, particularly those deprived rural areas, we see the advantage of CLÁR. It is relatively small money. There are small amounts that are provided, but that money goes really far in these areas and it is very much appreciated. It is possibly not transformative but it really helps to keep those communities' heads above the water. We have spoken here about the challenges communities are facing in terms of housing and demographics. The last time the three of us were in this Chamber discussing these matters, we were talking about isolation and loneliness. There are so many challenges. We could talk about rural policing. We could talk about access to public services. There are so many issues facing rural areas, particularly those more isolated and less well-off rural areas, and the CLÁR funding is really valuable. I encourage the Minister to do what he can to make that argument in his budgetary discussions this year. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-07-14/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:08+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-07-14