Ms. Majella Hunt gave an update on services in her Directorate:

Staff have been deployed to work at home or remotely and covering their duties remotely and some have taken on additional duties including manning of the Community Forum helpline  on a rotational basis for the COVID 19 response and supporting the  work of the Forum

LCDC meetings have continued with meetings being held remotely on Zoom /Microsoft team where projects have been considered and moved on to the next stage. The evaluation of the projects from article 48 are continuing as well in relation to the

The Community Forum is a new initiative that was announced by the government in mid-April. Phase 1 is the provision of a 24hr. helpline call centre staffed by our own staff and also in association with the Gardaí this provides a service through a network organised by LEADER in the delivery of groceries, medicines pensions and other services to the people that are cocooned and isolating in this crisis.  The second phase was announced on Friday

Each of our Departments will be providing online services. The Arts Centre, while closed to the public, its services are continuing online where a number of programmes have been devised either nationally or locally and are available all age groups and the list is available on their website with Phase 2 starting this week.

The new Arts Officer will be appointed in May and that will enable some of the programmes to be recommenced and a number of their programmes will be rescheduled towards the end of the year or in 2021. Similarly the libraries are closed but also providing online services and their work is continuing remotely and a number of the staff have been redeployed to other Departments and to the COVID response line. They also have a continued online programme and the details are on the library Facebook page and our websites.  Many of these programmes are devised in-house by the staff themselves and some of them are available through national networks.

The Local Enterprise Office are providing support to small businesses and it has an extensive programme devised by Enterprise Ireland and in-house by our own local office. The staff in the office are in constant contact with the businesses. All business are encouraged to contact them regarding difficulties encountered during the COVID-19 crisis but not in relation to rates where difficulties should be directed there.  Mentoring, training and dealing with trading vouchers are being facilitated in addition to dealing with small business loans on behalf of Enterprise Ireland.

The regeneration of villages and towns projects paused during the crisis but will be a significant step in stabilising and revitalising towns and villages throughout our county going forward. There are currently thirty projects being rolled out under various  funding streams. We are continuing to work on projects that are at various stages of progress and we are moving to design stage and tender stage of delivery.  A number of older projects at construction stage are on hold because contractors on the ground are under restriction and not working at present but we hope to resume as soon as such restrictions are lifted.

There are calls out at the moment under RDF  or for the projects and where we have prepared those and sent them in and we also have a call under you our D F which is the Orbán

the urban fond for and Roscommon tone is the designated town for that and also partnership with a lawn in relation to Monson that has now moved to the ordeal femme category so we are working with with me and we'll also working here on the next phase for Roscommon tone so these are projects that will be resumed after the restrictions are be new projects that we hoped that we will get further funding and as stated they are vital for the revitalisation  of our communities and our towns and villages.