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Rural Renewal Scheme ‘A Drop In The Ocean’

By August 11, 2016No Comments

The news this week that the Government is to allocate 10 million Euro to be spent on over 200 towns and villages in rural Ireland under the Town and Village Renewal Scheme may be welcome but it is a drop in the ocean and the Government will have to commit far more resources if it wants to show that it is serious about the revival of rural Ireland. The scheme says that an allocation of 380,000 Euro will be made to each county and that a maximum of eight projects will receive funding per county which works out at less than 50,000 Euro per project which will not achieve anything significant. As far as I can see this is window dressing so as the Government can say that it is doing something to revive rural Ireland. But there are far more serious issues to be addressed like poor mobile phone signals, broadband, health issues and many more, and the Government will have to do better than this to show that they are serious about addressing the economic imbalance that exists in the country between the east coast and Dublin in particular and rural Ireland