A Rural Development Strategy for County Clare will be launched in early summer, it was confirmed at the inaugural meeting of the newly formed Clare Rural Development Forum in Ennis this week.
Local community, business and farming groups, as well as Clare County Council, elected members and State and development agencies attended the meeting in the Ennis Civic Room at Waterpark.
Sinead Copeland, principal officer, Department of Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, also attended the event during which she outlined the Government’s recently launched Action Plan for Rural Irelan”.
One of the primary objectives of the Clare Rural Development Forum, which was announced by Clare County Council chief executive Pat Dowling last month, is to develop a Rural Development Strategy. It was confirmed in Ennis that in addition to key stakeholder organisations working in the rural development area, the public will have opportunity to make observations and submissions in the course of the development of the strategy during the coming months ahead of its launch in the summer.
Cathaoirleach of Clare County Council, Bill Chambers said the new forum “will reinforce the efforts of organisations whose work programmes and plans already collectively contribute to rural development in Clare.”
A native of Ennis, Colin McGann has been editor of The Clare Champion since August 2020. Former editor of The Clare People, he is a journalism and communications graduate of Dublin Institute of Technology.