Given the fact that the Midlands of Ireland are at the early stages of destination maturity and are relatively underdeveloped in terms of tourism experiences, there is a need to ensure that the EU Just Transition Fund investment is supported by a measure to enhance the capacity and capability of the industry.

To address this, the Tourism Activator Scheme is designed to provide funding to appoint one full-time or part-time Tourism Activator in each of the eight participating Local Authorities (Roscommon, Longford, Westmeath, Offaly, Laois, Kildare, Galway and Tipperary) within the territory in order to build capacity within private and community-based micro enterprises and SMEs and establish a series of high performing tourism business clusters and networks.

The scheme will involve the following:

• The appointment of 8 County Tourism Activators (1 per county or part-county with a mix of full-time and part-time roles)
• The creation of a EUJTF Tourism Activator Network, facilitated by Fáilte Ireland and comprising the County Tourism Activators will help ensure consistency and shared learnings within the team of Activators.

Geographical area covered:

EU Just Transition Fund territory. This includes the entire counties of Laois, Longford, Offaly, Roscommon, Westmeath, and municipal districts of Ballinasloe (Co. Galway), Athy and Clane-Maynooth (Co. Kildare), and Carrick-on-Suir and Thurles (Co. Tipperary).

Policy objective:

This call falls under the EU JTF programme Priority 1: Generating Employment for former peat communities by investing in the diversification of the local economy. The specific operation concerned is Action 1.1: Foster the economic diversification of the territory by supporting productive investments in micro-enterprises, SMEs and economic stakeholders in key sectors.

Co-funded by the Government of Ireland and European Union, the EU Just Transition Fund has a single specific objective, which is to enable regions and people to address the social employment, economic and environmental impacts of the transition towards the Union’s 2030 targets for energy and climate and a climate-neutral economy of the Union by 2050, based on the Paris Agreement.

Eligible Applicants:

Open call for specific applicants: 8 Local Authorities in the EU Just Transition territory.

Each Local Authority in the territory have run their own recruitment campaigns for this role.

Total amount of support:

In order to manage the EU Just Transition Fund budget allocation and ensure that an appropriate balance of spend is achieved in line with the overall objectives of the EU Just Transition Fund, is it at the discretion of Fáilte Ireland to place spending caps on one or more of the Schemes (B-G) during their operation, depending on the demand generated for each scheme. The total amount of funding available for Scheme B-G inclusive is €38million.
Indicative amount for this programme is €1.5 million.

Call start and end dates:

The scheme was deemed open once the Implementation Plan was adopted by the PMC and once the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage approved sanction to each of the eight Local Authorities for the creation of these additional posts.

Application process:

The eight Local Authorities were invited to participate in the scheme in accordance with a Tourism Activator Scheme Proposal that was issued to each of them by Fáilte Ireland.

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