I know Deputy Carey is a passionate supporter of the work carried out by the local development company in County Clare. The Deputy raised the issue of additional funding with me on a number of occasions. Deputy Carey is right that the former Minister, Deputy Ring, allocated additional funding to the top ten performing LEADER companies countrywide. That additional money was a positive move to reward the LEADER companies that were delivering the projects most efficiently. Like everything else, unfortunately, there ha…

That funding is available and I believe it is in the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. I will certainly check that out. If any of the projects are involved with food or food processing through the LEADER companies, they should apply for that specific food initiative. There is money available there for those types of projects. If other groups in County Clare want to look at other funding sources, there is the town and village scheme, the rural regeneration development fund and a number of possible othe…

I propose to take Questions Nos. 8 and 15 together. It is a strategic objective of my Department to develop and implement various initiatives and measures to support the social, cultural and economic development of the inhabited offshore islands to ensure they survive as viable communities. The provision of safe and regular access by sea is crucial for the maintenance of those island communities. The development of the pier on Inis Oírr, which includes the provision of a breakwater, is listed among the strategic ob…

I know the pier project at Inis Oírr is long awaited. Deputy Ó Cuív raised this matter on many occasions, he has worked hard on it and is very familiar with it, as are other Deputies. We are making progress. As I said, €0.5 million in funding was secured for upgrade works to the harbour facilities as part of the July stimulus. My officials are working very closely with Galway County Council to advance the project. I assure Deputy Farrell that I will make the case to the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform fo…

I take on board what the Deputies have said but the day-to-day maintenance of piers, including the development and enforcement of by-laws, is primarily an issue for the relevant local authority which in this case is Galway County Council. I am aware that damage was done to the pier in the early part of the year and I understand the Deputies' concerns regarding the volume of passengers and what has happened to them. Departmental officials have been in contact with their colleagues in Galway County Council with a vie…

Costings have been done. There are estimates but I do not want to elaborate because if I give details publicly, the estimate will then become the floor price. I will not do that but we have fairly detailed estimates of what the cost will be.

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. In April 2017, a public consultation process was undertaken, seeking submissions from interested parties in regard to the future use of airstrips and surrounding sites in the ownership of the State on Inishbofin Island and at Cleggan in County Galway. The majority of the submissions received suggested that the sites should remain in State ownership. There are no plans to provide an air service to Inishbofin at this time. With regard to the site at Cleggan, I understand dis…

I want to tell the Deputy that I do not have a State car, I have my own car. I have visited the islands. Last year, I had the pleasure of attending a wedding on Clare Island and I got an opportunity to see first-hand the difficulties people face. When I was on staycation in Donegal this year, I took the opportunity to go to Arranmore. I took a tour of the island and I saw first-hand the difficulties they face there. I have a certain understanding of what it is like to live in rural Ireland but to live on an island …

Of course. I will finish my answer shortly.

I am happy to engage with the Deputy on this issue. At the first opportunity, I will go and visit the island. I would be delighted to go and see first-hand again the issues presenting on those islands off the Galway coast. I have not been to any of them but I would be happy to go there and talk to the Deputy about this matter.

I thank Deputy Carey for raising this issue. This year's town and village renewal scheme has been tailored to assist our rural towns and villages to respond to the challenges presented by Covid-19. The scheme includes an accelerated measure which focuses on supporting initiatives that can immediately help towns and villages to adapt to social distancing requirements and provide safe environments for people to shop and socialise. With support from the Government's July stimulus package, funding of €10 million has be…

The Deputy is right that the town and village renewal scheme has been very successful since it was launched in 2016. It has worked extremely well, due to its co-ordinated bottom-up approach whereby local people work with local authorities and different groups to identify the projects and put in applications to get funding to make them a reality. The Deputy was very supportive of this scheme when he was chairing the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Rural and Community Development. He is also a big advocate for remote w…

I assure the Deputy I am engaging with the local authorities and will meet shortly with all the county and city managers. It is about working with local authorities and local communities in getting these projects developed and supporting them in doing that, which is what we want to do. People come up with ideas across the country and we want to help and support them. That is what the town and village renewal scheme and the rural regeneration development fund are all about.

I thank the Deputy. The provision of telecommunications services is primarily a matter for commercial providers operating in a liberalised market. Nonetheless, under the national broadband plan, the Government will fund the provision of a high-speed broadband network in areas where it is not commercially viable for service providers to do so. The national broadband plan network, which in under the remit of the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment, will be rolled out to almost 540,000 premise…

I thank the Deputies for raising this matter. I have also received correspondence from those involved and I acknowledge the huge stress many of the affected workers are under at this time. I have received their emails and read their stories, and I accept that some of them are in an awful situation. We have committed billions of euro in funding to support people's income since the onset of the pandemic through the pandemic unemployment payment, PUP; the TWSS, and the EWSS, which is new and which took effect from the…

This issue only came to the fore in the past number of weeks. My priority is in getting the issue sorted for the workers so they can claim the supports they are entitled to. In order to do that, the employer needs to provide UP80 forms to certify the number of days that employees have worked. We must have confirmation of the days people are unemployed because otherwise we would be paying money out to everyone. We have to get the details. I confirm that when those forms are received, claims will be backdated to 1 Se…

I thank the Deputy for raising this matter. The Covid-19 pandemic unemployment payment, PUP, was introduced as an emergency measure to meet the surge in unemployment which resulted from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. From the outset, the payment has been made available to both employees and the self-employed. From a peak of more than 600,000 claimants, there are now fewer than 300,000 people claiming the payment. The latest figure is 287,000. As part of the Government's July stimulus package announced las…

I thank the Deputy. Where a person is self-employed, his or her gross average weekly income for 2018 is used to calculate the rate of the pandemic unemployment payment. That is because it is the last tax year for which verifiable data on self-employed income is available. The nature of self-employment is such that it is not possible for Revenue and for PRSI purposes to attribute self-employment income to any particular week, and earnings are assessed on a full-year basis. Any person who feels that the assessment of…

I thank the Deputy. As I said last night, we have to take a common-sense approach to this because some sectors have not fully opened up yet. We will do that, and I have asked my officials to ensure that that sensible approach is taken for those who cannot return to work and who are waiting for their job to come back. If they work in a pub, and we hope pubs will reopen by 10 August, they will get that opportunity. However, we have to be realistic because some jobs will not come back and there is no point in waiting …

I thank the Deputy for raising this matter. The community employment scheme is an active labour market programme designed to provide eligible long-term unemployed people and other disadvantaged persons with an opportunity to engage in useful work within their communities on a temporary, fixed term basis. In general, the period of participation on community employment is for one year. However, community employment participants who are working towards a major award or industry qualification can seek to extend partici…