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Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine and Donegal T.D., Charlie McConalogue, confirmed that Donegal local community and voluntary groups will receive almost €400k in energy supports under a fund announced by Ministers Humphreys and Joe O’Brien. Donegal will receive the largest funding package outside Dublin.

Commenting, Minister McConalogue said “Our community and voluntary groups are the lifeblood of Donegal and they do tremendous work for our communities. It is important that we support them with increasing costs and I am delighted that Donegal will receive the highest allocation outside Dublin.”

The Community Support Fund will provide small grants to a wide and diverse range of local community groups to assist with their running costs.

Funding will be available to support Parish Halls, Community Centres, Local Development Associations, Social Clubs, ICA Groups, Senior Citizen Groups, Men’s Sheds, Women’s Sheds and much more.

The new scheme has been devised to support groups with their energy costs who may not have been deemed eligible under previous Government schemes.

These include groups that operate from parish halls and who need support with running costs such as energy or insurance bills.

Groups can also use the funding to carry out small upgrade works and to purchase equipment to support their activities such as laptops and printers, lawnmowers, training equipment, etc.

The once-off fund will be allocated under the Department’s Community Enhancement Programme and will be administered locally by the Local Community Development Committees (LCDCs).

Groups should contact their LCDC for further details of the fund.

This initiative forms part of a range of measures being undertaken by the department to support the community and voluntary sector, and to empower thriving, sustainable communities across Ireland.  It also ties into the Reduce Your Use energy efficiency campaign recently approved by the cabinet which is designed to target reductions in energy use within the public service