A Welcome Note

A chara,

While the Dáil wrapped up for the summer, it certainly continued to be a busy one in the constituency.

I'm delighted to see the new constituency office open in Athenry being so busy.

If you're in the area, do call in - it's open from 10am to 1pm every day.

Thankfully, the Covid-19 vaccination programme has been a major success and has helped the easing of restrictions in many sectors, with the further reopening of the music and arts sector on the cards in the weeks ahead.

As always, if you need my assistance with any issue, please do contact the office and I or a member my team will be in touch.

Anne

58 House Development for Athenry

I was delighted to receive confirmation from the Department of Housing that Galway County Council has been granted approval in principle for 58 turnkey social homes at Cullairbaun in Athenry.

It’s also great to deliver such news on the eve of the announcement of the government’s new ‘Housing for All’ strategy.

As the Taoiseach has said himself, housing is the number one priority for this government and as we emerge from this pandemic, it’s great to deliver news of such a development in East Galway.

These 58 homes will allow 58 families, couples or individuals makes Athenry their home.

Athenry is a thriving community and one with so much potential. The town is crying out for new housing, both social and affordable, and this goes some way towards meeting this demand. Located close to the town centre, these social homes will breathe new life into the area.

I know the team in Galway County Council really welcome this development as well and are keen to see progress made as soon as possible.

Turning the Sod at new Tuam Community Nursing Home

I was delighted that Minister for Older Persons, Mary Butler TD, accepted my invitation to Tuam for the official turning of the sod at the site for the new Community Nursing Home in Tuam (pictured above).

The facility is located beside the new Primary Care Centre and will include 50 beds, including a high dependency unit, and equates to an investment of €22 million.

The facility will replace the existing Arus Mhuire building on the Dublin Road and forms part of the Tuam Health Campus, which includes an ambulance base, primary care centre, mental health day hospital, disability service unit and the community nursing unit.

A major thanks goes to Joe O'Toole who donated a staggering €7 million to help fund the project.

Galway secures €276,513 in CLAR funding to support schools, playgrounds, infrastructure projects and community organisations across Galway.

Today’s announcement will see six projects supported in rural communities across Galway, under Measures 1 & 2 of the CLÁR 2021 programme.

This is very welcome funding for rural Galway, and it signals this government’s commitment to investing in our schools, playgrounds, outdoor amenities and other projects across the county.

This will make a big difference to the communities in the likes of Woodford, Abbey and Lurga.

The funding will be used to upgrade footpaths, lighting, playgrounds and Multi Use Games Areas, which makes it clear that this funding is focused on the young people in Galway.

If the Pandemic has taught us one thing, it’s that our young people are our shining lights. Investing in them is an investment in our future – that’s what this announcement is all about.

€935,000K Provided to Galway Clubs for Sports Equipment

I welcomed the news that 58 sports organisations around Galway who, combined, are receiving €935,000 for equipment from Government.

Everything from GAA to Camogie, from volleyball to swimming, from gymnastics to tennis, and everything in between, there’s a wide range of sports supported across Galway covering the full range of ages.

This funding is another example of Government helping sporting communities through these challenging times; supporting clubs and organisations to provide the facilities necessary to achieve our objectives of increased participation in sport; and help realise the immense benefits that physical activity can bring to our lives.

Today’s grants will assist sports clubs purchase the sports equipment to hopefully develop our sporting

New Primary Care Centre for Gort

Just great to see a new Primary Care Centre for Gort has advanced to the next stage of the HSE’s development process.

Such a development is very much needed in not just the town itself but South Galway.

Previous efforts to develop a Primary Care Centre in Gort were not successful so it’s great to see positive developments this time around.

The HSE have confirmed to me that a schedule of accommodation needed for the proposed Primary Care Centre in Gort was completed in June, which will ensure people have access to modern facilities that cater to the varying needs of people in the area.

Galway has been awarded €320k in funding for businesses and towns to carry out works to enhance the quality of the local streetscape.

124 towns and villages will benefit from a new €7 million fund to support the enhancement of streetscapes and shopfronts.

The Streetscape Enhancement Initiative is a key part of Our Rural Future and is designed to make our rural towns and villages more attractive places to live, work and visit.

Under the scheme, property owners will be provided with funding to improve the facades of their buildings, carry out artwork and install features such as canopies and street furniture.

The 124 towns and villages announced by the Minister today were selected by each local authority, which will now begin the process of advertising locally for applications.

The types of projects to be supported include:

• strategic collaboration between property owners to paint buildings or shopfronts in vibrant colours
• commissioning of murals in towns and villages
• upgrade or restoration of historic / traditional shopfronts
• provision of street planting, shrubbery, trees and flowers boxes
• illumination and lighting of architectural features
• installation of canopies and street furniture
• decluttering of streetscapes with removal of unnecessary signs/wires

Galway has been awarded €320k in funding for businesses and towns to carry out works to enhance the quality of the local streetscape.

Galway is one of nine counties with the most towns and villages, placing it in the top bracket of funding in the €7 million package announced on Wednesday.

The Streetscape Enhancement Initiative provides grant funding for improvements to building facades, artwork, lighting, greenery, and more.

Ballinasloe was awarded €200,000 for streetscape enhancement works last year, in a pilot for the project which has now rolled out nationwide as part of the government’s ‘Our Rural Future’ strategy.

The Streetscape Enhancement Measure will be administered by Local Authorities who will be requested to nominate at least two towns per county, which will be announced in the coming weeks.

This unique initiative is about making our rural towns and villages more attractive and welcoming places for locals and visitors alike.

Whether it’s painting buildings in vibrant colours, upgrading shop fronts or installing canopies or street furniture – this fund will provide a welcome boost to rural communities the length and breadth of the country.

We all know that even the most modest of improvements to our buildings and streetscapes can make a huge difference.

And so over the coming weeks, local authorities will work closely with businesses and property owners to give our towns and villages the facelift they deserve.

If you are a business or property owner in any of the 124 towns and villages selected, I encourage you to contact your local authority for details on how to apply.

I have no doubt the projects funded by this initiative will make a huge difference to our rural towns and villages and, most importantly, the families who live there.

Government Publishes Views on Right to Request Remote Work

Views from members of the public and stakeholder groups on the right to request remote work have been published by the Government.

An important commitment in the Strategy is to introduce a new law giving workers the right to request to remote work. This includes guidance for employers and workers and a Remote Working Checklist.

Currently in Ireland, all employees can ask their employers for the right to work remotely, but there is no legal framework around which a request can be made and how it should be dealt with by the employer.

This new law will set out clearly how these requests should be facilitated as far as possible.

The pandemic pushed companies and consumers to a rapidly adopt new behaviours that are likely to stick, changing the trajectory of three groups of trends.

The scale of workforce transitions set off by COVID-19’s influence on labour trends increases the urgency for both businesses and policymakers to take steps to support additional training and education programs for workers.

Companies and governments exhibited extraordinary flexibility and adaptability in responding to the pandemic with purpose and innovation that they might also harness to retool the workforce in ways that point to a brighter future of work.

Policymakers could support businesses by expanding and enhancing the digital infrastructure, scaling up the excellent training provided by Grow Remote.​

Governments must also consider extending benefits and protections to independent workers and to workers working to build their skills and knowledge mid-career.

The reward of such efforts would be a more resilient, more talented, and better-paid workforce—and a more robust and equitable society.

Major Investment in Children's Respite in Galway

I’m delighted to deliver a major investment in children’s respite in Galway, which will see a major increase in respite provision across the county, as well as in Roscommon and Mayo.

A new respite centre is opening Galway East in Autumn, which will deliver an additional 225 bed nights in 2021.

Meanwhile, alternative forms of respite will deliver 1,236 additional nights of respite for the remainder of 2021 across the three counties.

This includes an increase in in-home supports and the provision of enhanced respite and family support for children in urgent nee

€1.2 million scheme to improve environmental quality of agricultural lands surrounding raised bogs

The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, has launched the new FarmPEAT EIP project. The project is developing a locally-led, innovative, results-based farm scheme for farmers who manage lands that surround some of Ireland’s finest remaining raised bogs.

Ireland’s Rural Development Programme (RDP) 2014-2020, in total, the Department has committed €64 million to these EIP projects over the lifetime of the RDP.

It’s encouraging to see work beginning on these inland bogs. Raised bogs represent one of the most valuable natural ecosystems in Ireland and the appropriate management of adjacent agricultural lands that surround them can play an important role in maintaining and enhancing their long-term conservation value.

The project will work with local farmers to design and trial a programme especially adapted to the local landscape. It will reward farmers for improved management of habitats on peat soils along with other important landscape features such as eskers, field boundaries and watercourses. All of that will I believe combine to deliver enhanced environmental outcomes.

The new locally-led programme brings together farmers, farm advisers, scientists, and researchers to deliver a targeted landscape level intervention which places the farmer at the heart of the process.

It will be results-based in that farmers will get paid based on the scores they achieve, with higher scores, indicating higher environmental quality, securing higher payments.

It is hoped that this programme will form a basis for future agri-environmental schemes in these areas. As such it presents an opportunity for farmers to be involved in developing policy that could provide long term environmental and economic benefits to their communities into the future.

The European Innovation Partnerships Initiative (EIP)/locally led schemes are funded through Ireland’s Rural Development Programme 2014-2020 (RDP). These locally-led schemes promote local solutions to specific issues and involve the establishment of Operational Groups to develop ideas or take existing ideas/research and put them into practice by being working towards the resolution of a practical problem.

More information on the FarmPEAT project can be found below.

​www.farmpeat.ie​

Education -Staff and students to join pilot rapid testing project on 4 college campuses

The government are urging staff and students to volunteer to be part of rapid testing and other testing surveillance systems on college campuses.

The project, called UniCoV, will conduct a large-scale analysis of testing technologies for use in surveillance of Covid-19 and prevention in higher education settings.

These will include rapid antigen testing, saliva-based PCR testing and wastewater surveillance. The findings will inform the development of early warning systems for future outbreak prevention and control.

Staff and students can enrol across four universities –

• NUI Galway
• Trinity College Dublin
• University College Dublin
• University College Cork.

Government announces €8.8 million in funding under the Connected Hubs Scheme

The government have announced over €8.8 million in funding under the Connected Hubs Scheme – a key deliverable of Our Rural Future.

The funding will enable existing hubs and broadband connection points to enhance and add capacity to remote working infrastructure in every region across Ireland.

Grants will also fund measures to assist hubs to deal with COVID related challenges.

The funding will benefit 117 projects and will support a wide range of relevant works nationwide including the expansion of existing hubs, installation of privacy booths, access control and security systems, the conversion of existing open plan space to modular offices, and provision of enhanced audio visual, networking and conferencing facilities.

This investment will support the ongoing development of the recently launched National Hub Network – connectedhubs.ie – which already has more than 100 hubs using the platform and 380 hubs mapped.

Our Rural Future recognises hubs as ideal locations for people to work remotely, as well as acting as key economic assets for towns and villages.

The increased shift to remote working as a result of the pandemic has provided a golden opportunity for a greater regional distribution of jobs to support a better work life balance for many people.

This opportunity is reflected in Our Rural Future and in policy initiatives across the whole of Government, such as Making Remote Work, the National Remote Working strategy.

Included in the announcement is:

• €239,000 for Co. Galway Broadband Connection Points. This investment will develop and expand remote working capacity in 8 BCPs throughout the County. This will represent a significant addition in capacity for the region. As a part of this investment remote working facilities on 2 offshore islands in particular have the potential to significantly benefit the local economy and community.

Full details of the 117 projects approved for funding by the Minister under the Connected Hubs Scheme are available here​

The National Hub Network Working Group led by the Department of Rural and Community Development has so far identified and mapped 380 remote working hubs across the country.

These hubs will be invited to join the Connected Hubs Network to create shared infrastructure that will deliver real benefits across the country.

Membership of the Connected Hubs Network is open to all existing and new hubs who wish to offer remote working services.

The following initiatives will be developed through this initiative;

• A Shared Connected Hubs brand identity for all member hubs
• A Centralised Connected Hubs media and promotional campaigns
• Access to the ConnectedHubs.ie suite of booking, hub management and e-commerce applications.
• Development of a Peer-to-Peer Hub Community
• Sharing of Innovation, Experience and Best-Practices within the community
• Developing a shared quality standard for hubs in the Network
• Supporting collaborative projects in the Network to drive economies of scale
• Developing a ‘shared voice’ for Connected Hubs
• Supporting collective engagement between Connected Hubs and large scale employers
• Supporting collective engagement between Connected Hubs and Government Agencies
• Helping to identify the benefits Connected Hubs deliver for their local communities and the wider economy
• Developing a dataset to inform future investment decisions in remote working facilities

Xplore Portumna launched on the 10th May 2021 at Portumna Forest Park

The highly-anticipated Xplore Portumna App was launched on the 10th May 2021 at Portumna Forest Park.

It was a pleasure to join the team from Xplore at Portumna to celebrate the launch of the platform in our town.

What better way to mark the occasion than a magnificent hamper from local artisans, Lexi's Hampers.

Among those in attendance were Elodie Golden, Founder of the Galway Wild Geese, Enterprise Development Manager for the Burren Lowlands, Laura Tannian, Xplore CEO Colin Hanley, Xplore's Commercial Director Averil Burke and Andrew Fahey from the Wild Geese team.

We were also joined by some local explorers who came out to support the new and improved app.

A great day out was had by all at the grounds of the majestic Portumna Castle, Portumna Forest Park, and the Portumna Marina — three spectacular landmarks that demonstrate just how much my home town has to offer.

I am delighted to see the app up and running in Portumna and the positive response it has had within the local community.

The wonderful thing about the app is that there’s something in it for everyone...from the local news to the attractions to the hikes and trails, there’s something for all ages — and it’s easy to use.

Just today, I met a couple of tourists at the Workhouse and when I asked them how they found out about it - they replied “we used Xplore portumna app and it brought us right to the door."

Elodie Golden and her local team have been working tirelessly over the past number of months to get the app ready for release.

‘This is a fantastic digital opportunity for Portumna as it joins the more than 1700 businesses, clubs and services already listed in the wider Xplore community.

Our goal with this app is to promote sustainable tourism activities, promote recreational activities, share cultural events and increase footfall to local retailers.

Here in Portumna, we are especially proud of our landmark heritage sites, our nature reserve designated as a Special Areas of Conservation and the app brings all of these attractions to life.’

Andrew Fahey, Brand Warrior. Wild Geese said:

As a digital native, my friends and I have grown up with the digital fluency and aptitude to love and use mobile apps to their full potential.

I was impressed with the xplore platform, in particular, the user experience and user interface and enjoyed working on the backend, promoting its many features within my home town.

Portumna has now become part of Xplore’s growing network of towns that extends from Galway to Kerry, from Cork to Carlow.

The launch is indicative of a wider movement in towns across the country, where enterprising locals are seeking out new and efficient ways to boost their local economies, attract tourists and promote their towns’ amenities.

I am actively working to onboard a number of other towns onto the app including Athenry, Loughrea and Ballinasloe to join their sister Galway towns. Watch this space!

€490k awarded to projects to promote the Circular Economy across Ireland

Funding of €490,000 has been awarded to 10 projects across Ireland under the first Circular Economy Innovation Grant Scheme (CEIGS).

Creating a ‘circular economy’ is part of the move towards a more sustainable future, with a focus on reducing and eliminating waste and keeping resources in use for as long as possible. The CEIGS will help communities to make this transition.

CEIGS is supporting projects across the whole spectrum of the circular economy, from green construction to digital platforms for re-use.

The scale of the challenge to become circular requires change at every level of our society.

We can learn so much from doing.

The selected projects will support the drive to develop the circular economy in areas such as sustainable fashion, marine plastics, reusable food packaging and construction.

In order to become a more circular society we need to build consumer confidence in second-hand goods and services.

A quality mark, like ReMark, changes how people view second-hand goods and services, driving demand for them and reducing the carbon impact of everyday purchases.CRNI is thrilled to be awarded CEIGS funding.

This will enable us to prepare our ReMark quality mark for national roll-out, which we believe can be a game changer in Ireland’s circular economy transition.

The funding will be used to support our members and private sector actors to access and pilot this enhanced quality mark.

This will help to build consumer confidence in the quality and safety of second-hand goods, by supporting reuse organisations to improve internal processes and customer service.

€96,930 to fund two vehicles for community-based organisations providing vital services in East Galway.

Minister for Disabilities and Fianna Fáil TD for Galway East, Anne Rabbitte, today (Thursday, September 2nd) confirmed the provision of €96,930 to fund two vehicles for community-based organisations providing vital services in East Galway.

Under the 2021 CLÁR programme, the funding will support the purchase of a vehicle for East Galway and Midlands Cancer Support (€42,930) and the purchase of a bus with adaptions for Ability West in Mountbellew (€54,000).

The vehicles will be used to assist people who are wheelchair-bound or have other mobility issues.

This funding will ensure some of the most vulnerable people in our communities in East Galway can access vital supports or attend medical appointments.

I want to commend the invaluable work both the East Galway and Midlands Cancer Support and Ability West organisations do as they are crucial supports for people in East Galway and this is much deserved funding for them.

For families across East Galway, the provision of such transport services by the East Galway and Midlands Cancer Support and Ability West are vital for families to continue day to day and ensure access to the services they need.

This funding enables these organisations to have the best transport at their disposal to support their service users.

Once again, this also reflects a commitment in the Government’s rural development policy, ‘Our Rural Future’, to improve transport and accessibility in Rural Ireland,” concluded Minister Rabbitte.

The CLÁR (Ceantair Laga Árd-Riachtanais) programme is funded by the Department of Rural and Community Development and forms part of the Government’s ambitious new five year policy for rural Ireland, Our Rural Future.

A Picture is worth A Thousand Words

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A Picture is worth A Thousand Words

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