Kerry County Council has announced details of the allocation of €750,000 in funding support for community groups and projects across the county under the Community Support Fund for 2019.  A total of 246 groups and projects received grant aid worth €388,000 this year while a proportion of the fund, totalling €362,000, is being retained to secure and leverage funding from other funding streams for strategic projects across the Municipal Districts.

• Countywide Community Support Fund 2019 Approved Funding
• Killarney Municipal District Community Support Fund 2019 Approved Funding
• Tralee Municipal District Community Support Fund 2019 Approved Funding
• Listowel Municipal District Community Support Fund 2019 Approved Funding
• South & West Municipal District Community Support Fund 2019 Approved Funding

The fund, which is in its fifth year, has supported 1,500 projects since 2015 to the value of €3.75m since its establishment. As occurred in previous years, some of the Community Support Fund will be used this year to target strategic projects in the four municipal districts and to co-fund projects which are in receipt of grants from other sources.

Councillors in the four Municipal Districts met on Tuesday to decide on the allocations and unanimously welcomed the provision of support to the recipients. Councillors congratulated all the community groups and acknowledged the tremendous voluntary work that these groups do. Full details of the allocations in each of the four Municipal Districts are attached.

Allocations on a countywide basis were made as follows:

• Cork Kerry Link Bus – transport bus for patients availing of cancer treatment service: €6,000
• Fleadh Cheoil Chiarrai 2019 – To fund a programme of events during the festival which will be hosted in Milltown from 19^th – 23^rd June 2019 – €5,000
• Kerry’s Older People’s Council – To support the activities of Kerry’s Older People’s Council which was established under Kerry’s Age Friendly Strategy – €3,000
• Kerry Climate Action Network– To support the cost of hosting a Community Environmental and Climate Action Expo in Kerry in Autumn 2019 – €2,000

Over the past two years, over €3 million was leveraged from other grant sources as a result of the strategic allocation of resources under the Community Support Fund.

For 2019, the fund will target funding under five categories of support:

• Growing and Sustaining Communities
• Community Tidy Towns Initiatives and Amenity Projects
• Community Sport and Physical Activity Programmes
• Community Economic Innovation
• Community Based Tourism, Festivals and Events

Cathaoirleach of Kerry County Council, Cllr Norma Foley, said: ‘Since the Community Support Fund was established in 2015, a very significant sum of €3.75m has been invested by Kerry County Council in community projects and initiatives around the county. This is indicative of the council’s strong and ongoing support for the work being done by community and voluntary organisations all over the county to build vibrant, sustainable communities and the value of that work in Kerry.’

‘The Community Support Fund has targeted funding towards a very wide range of community-based projects and has provided support to community councils, chamber alliances, tidy towns groups and other organisations in a very progressive and structured way. The retention of part of the fund to help to leverage funding from other sources and to co-fund projects with other funding streams has proven to be an enormous success in recent years and will be successful again, I hope, in 2019.’