Vol. 690 No. 3
121 Deputy Liz McManus asked the Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs his views on the recommendation contained in the report of the special group on public services numbers and expenditure programmes that the CLÁR programme should be phased out; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [34200/09]
126 Deputy Joe Costello asked the Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs his views on the recommendation contained in the report of the special group on public services numbers and expenditure programmes that the Dormant Account Fund Board should be abolished; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [34198/09]
128 Deputy Kathleen Lynch asked the Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs his views on the recommendation contained in the report of the special group on public services numbers and expenditure programmes that funding for the community services programme should be cut by €10 million; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [34199/09]
137 Deputy Joe Costello asked the Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs his views on the recommendation contained in the report of the special group on public services numbers and expenditure programmes that his Department should be abolished; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [34195/09]
139 Deputy Ciarán Lynch asked the Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs his views on the recommendation contained in the report of the special group on public services numbers and expenditure programmes that funding for community and voluntary support sectors should be cut by €10 million; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [34196/09]
143 Deputy Liz McManus asked the Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs his views on the recommendation contained in the report of the special group on public services numbers and expenditure programmes that development functions of the Western Enterprise Board should be transferred to Enterprise Ireland; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [34201/09]
147 Deputy Ciarán Lynch asked the Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs his views on the recommendation contained in the report of the special group on public services numbers and expenditure programmes that RAPID programme should be discontinued; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [34197/09]
159 Deputy Eamon Gilmore asked the Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs if it is intended to transfer Uadarás na Gaeltachta’s enterprise development functions to Enterprise Ireland; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [34190/09]
I propose to take Questions Nos 121, 126, 128, 137, 139, 143, 147 and 159 together.
As the Minister of State stated in reply to Priority Question No. 117, and as indicated to this House on a number of occasions, the recommendations in the report of the special group on public services numbers and expenditure programmes represent a set of options for consideration in the context of the 2010 budget and will fall to be examined by Government at the appropriate time. Decisions on specific matters referred to by Deputies will be made in that context. Matters relating to the Gaeltacht will be also considered by the Cabinet Committee on Irish and the Gaeltacht in the context of its work on the preparation of the 20-year strategy for Irish.
The Minister of State, Deputy Curran, said that members of the Department met with the committee that published the McCarthy report, but that no Minister or Minister of State from the Department did so. Was any documentation presented at those meetings? If so, is that information available to spokespersons from the Opposition? In all the documentation I have seen, it seems we have put forward a very poor defence of these schemes.
For the €100 million that the McCarthy report claims was spent on CLÁR, how many employment opportunities were created from that spending? Over what period were they created and in what areas were they created? If we are to take it that meetings took place and we are to look at the McCarthy report as published, it would seem as if the defence of these schemes was meek and timid, to say the least. How can we rectify that matter? Were papers exchanged? Can the Minister give us some detail on the benefits to rural communities by the investment of €100 million?
I do not know the totality of the papers that were made available, or what was their status. I will find out what can and cannot be made available. There might be some FOI issues, but I am not sure. I will look into it.
I do not know how many jobs were created. I do not know if anybody knows. It is very hard to get cause and effect. I worked for many years in job creation. It is not just about creating jobs, but about creating sustainable jobs. It is about something growing to a stage that it no longer needs further State support, but keeps growing and growing. The measure of job creation is the number of jobs created by the number of years they are sustained and the number of jobs they, in turn, self-sustain. I do not know if anybody has that data. We can collect endless figures and make endless cases. However, we must make sure that the collection of the data does not become more important than doing the work. I have no doubt as to the efficacy of the schemes we run. We have debated these time and again during the Estimates process. If one believes that there are schemes such as CLÁR, RAPID, the Gaeltacht schemes and so on that should be wiped out, then I am all ears.
This was meant to be an independent report. The idea that we can have an independent report which only states what the Department thinks is a kind of a nonsense. Of course, given that it is an independent report, we do not have to accept the findings. I was a little bit surprised, shocked and horrified when my colleague mentioned that not all the proposals in the report would be implemented. Everybody in this House would disagree with aspects of the report, and say that the experience of the people writing it would not be the experience of the Deputies on the ground of the efficiencies of various schemes. I think the scheme I inherited has grown and is run efficiently. I do not accept the criticism of the community services programme that the outputs are uncertain. I guarantee that if we were to stop the community services programme, there is not a Deputy in this House that would not be in here with multiple delegations, explaining to me the importance of the schemes of that programme in his or her local community. Every Deputy would be in here and they would tell me that it is a tragedy that anybody was even considering cutting back on that scheme.
Mr. McCarthy obviously had a different view, and he is entitled to that. It is an interesting report and there are some very thought provoking proposals in it. My officials are looking at every one of his proposals, and writing our critique of his critique. That will work its way through the system and the Government will make decisions on where we go from there.
I think the Minister may be misinterpreting what I am saying. I agree with these different projects, but the Minister is only now talking about a reply to the McCarthy report, when in the first instance he should have been in there fighting his corner. The doubt has been cast on these wonderful programmes, and the Minister has allowed that doubt to be cast on them. He is now going to write the critique, but it is too late because the general public thinks differently following the McCarthy report. The Opposition spokespersons were not given any opportunity to be part of the case for the defence.
The case put forward by the Department was obviously too weak. The report constantly states there is no evidence for the programmes, so is it not a bit late to be putting forward evidence when the door is closed? The Minister needs to come out strongly and he will have our support. Deputy Ring is supportive of the schemes, and I am supportive of the schemes, because they are all involved with the community. If the McCarthy report is trying to close down rural Ireland and if the Minister continues to write up reports at a late stage, then he will assist Mr. McCarthy in doing that.
I do not accept that there is not a huge amount of evidence, be it documentation, paperwork, reports and so on, so much that the Deputy is always complaining about the reports we get commissioned on re-evaluating——
Why were they not presented to the McCarthy group?
They are all available.
The report states that there is no evidence.
That is Mr. McCarthy's call. The report also stated that there is an obligation to translate every document into Irish, which is factually incorrect, as the Deputy knows because he was in the House when this issue was being legislated. Mr. McCarthy is entitled to his view and we are entitled to our view. The great thing is that the McCarthy report is only a report. It is the Government that will make the hard decisions, and there will be hard decisions. Anybody who tells me that he can save €4 billion and not make any cuts anywhere is not living in the real world. We have hard decisions to make and we will make them on this side of the House, because it seems to me that they are telling us on one hand to make the cutbacks, and on the other hand, they tell us to make some other cutback but not the one at hand.
The decision to commission the McCarthy report was purposely done so that the Ministers would not write the report. What was the point in bringing in somebody independent——
I am not talking about writing the report. I am talking about submitting the evidence.
Allow the Minister to respond.
The evidence is there.
McCarthy said there is no evidence.
Allow the Minister to reply.
That is his call. I am telling the Deputy that the evidence is there and he knows the evidence is there——
I support it. McCarthy states that there is no evidence.
Yes, but the Deputy knows that Mr. McCarthy is wrong on that issue.
Why does the Minister not come out and say——
I am saying that there are many value for money reports carried out in our Department, that we have complied with all the regulations. The Deputy knows this and should make his judgment as to whether the evidence on all our schemes is publicly available or not. If there was any criticism levelled at us, it was that we were getting too many reports commissioned on Leader and Gaeltacht schemes and so on.
There is much repetition involved here. I call on Deputy Ring.
I agree with Deputy Wall. It was the job of the Minister and his departmental officials to defend the Department. Instead of that, the McCarthy report and the Department of Finance have stated that they could not get information from his Department. He could not tell them the cost per job in Gaeltacht areas. He could not even inform them of the number of staff in Údarás na Gaeltachta. It is here in a letter from the Department of Finance. We need life in rural Ireland. The Minister and his Department are creating a problem for us because the McCarthy report states that there is duplication. There is certainly duplication. We have so many agencies in the Gaeltacht and elsewhere doing the same job. That is where the problem lies. It is an industry in itself. I go down to Erris where there are many agencies. The Minister promised a one-stop shop, but it never happened. We need a one-stop shop in Gaeltacht and rural areas so that people can be dealt with there, whether it concerns Údarás na Gaeltachta, employment, social welfare or whatever. Instead of that we have a clutter of organisations. We need to clean up this situation fast.
I am glad the Deputy is singing from the same hymn sheet as me and I give credit to my colleagues in the Opposition for all the support and assistance they gave in the difficult task of trying to rationalise the structures, between the Leader companies and the partnerships. They are aware from working of the huge resistance and delays put up against that process. In recent weeks, I had to tell the three umbrella bodies there used to be for the community — partnerships, planning for the earlier partnerships and Comhar Leader na hÉireann for the Leader companies — that I wanted one umbrella body and that 1 November was D-day for that. This is after nine months. I credit the Opposition with supporting this type of rationalisation. As Members are aware, the Minister of State announced recently that we will do a comhtháthú and will bring the community development programme, CDP, and the local development social inclusion programme, LDSIP, into synch because there is duplication in that area.
I am working on the question of Údarás na Gaeltachta but this is difficult because issues have arisen with which I must deal. In the longer term, we should not have both Meitheal Forbartha na Gaeltachta, MFG, and Údarás na Gaeltachta in the Gaeltacht. There should only be Údarás na Gaeltachta. I have stated this publicly and am working slowly and steadily in that direction. However, we cannot bring this type of change about overnight. People have employment rights and there are various procedures to be gone through. There must be a reasonable time for consultation. I have taken the view, with my Minister of State, that when we have gone through a reasonable period, we will have a decision day, as we have now for the umbrella bodies. Decision day for them is 1 November. I look forward to the continuing support of the Opposition when we continue with the process of rationalisation.
Does the Minister agree there is justifiable and grave concern among the people about the future of the Gaeltacht? Can he give assure us that scéim labhairt na Gaeilge agus scéim na bhfoghlaimeoirí Gaeilge will not be phased out over two years? Why, in the name of God, is it taking such a long time to publish the 20-year strategy? It has been promised over and over again, but we still have not got it and from what the Minister has said today, we appear to be no closer to it. Has the Government abandoned the Irish language in the Gaeltacht?
The Deputy is broadening the scope of the question.
The issue was referred to in the Minister's response.
I understand the papers the Department gave to the committee were published on the website of the Department of Finance. Therefore, the documents the Deputy requested are available.
On the issue of the Gaeltacht, when in the Gaeltacht in the past two weeks, the Taoiseach reiterated the Government's commitment to the Irish language. We are nearing completion——
Words.
And actions. We have done a significant amount for the Irish language in the past ten years, and will continue to do it. The recommendations of the McCarthy report are just recommendations. Therefore, unless and until the Government accepts them, there is no point in criticising it for something that has not yet happened. The proposals in the McCarthy report and the 20-year strategy for the Irish language will be considered in tandem. We will publish the 20-year strategy and those decisions will be reflected in the budget for next year. The 20-year strategy is a long-term strategy and we will look way beyond the short-term problems we have with finance in laying out the strategy. The Deputy may rest assured that the Government is committed fully to the Irish language.
However, in looking at existing schemes, it would be a mistake for us to get trapped into believing the schemes we have currently are necessarily the optimal schemes. I have questioned and question again whether giving a grant to children of four or five years of age whose language was decided when they were born does much to convert English speaking families into Irish speaking families. I question whether that money would be better spent on supporting language transmission to children when they are born rather than trying to work a miracle that never works of converting the language of a child at four years of age.
Is the Minister, who comes from and represents a Gaeltacht area, aware of the concern and anxiety among Gaeltacht communities, from Donegal to Cork, at the proposals in this report, particularly with regard to scéim labhairt na Gaeilge, scéim na bhfoghlaimeoirí Gaeilge and other such schemes? It is important before more harm is done that in the interest of the Gaeltacht and the Irish language Gaeltacht communities are reassured as soon as possible that these schemes will not be discontinued.
There was no recommendation in the McCarthy report to discontinue the scheme next year, even if the McCarthy recommendations are applied. The Deputy can take it therefore that the coláistí Gaeilge will go ahead next year. Even a full implementation of the McCarthy report indicates this.
Scéim na bhfoghlaimeoirí Gaeilge has been one of the most effective schemes agus go bhfuil sé tar éis an Ghaeilge a chur chun cinn ar bhealach nár éirigh le haon scéim ó thús athbheochan na Gaeilge. Creidim gur ceann de na fáthanna go bhfuil an oiread cainteoirí breátha Gaeilge taobh amuigh den Ghaeltacht ná de bharr scéim na bhfoghlaimeoirí Gaeilge. Bhí mé i Ros a'Mhíl le gairid nuair a d'oscail muid ionad nua do Choláiste Chamuis. Mar is eol don Teachta freisin, bhí mé thuas i nGort an Choirce. Tá mo Roinn ag déanamh infheistíochta sna coláistí Gaeilge. Mar sin, mar adúirt an Taoiseach faoi na coláistí Gaeilge, tuigeann muid tábhacht na gcoláistí Gaeilge. Táim sásta sin a rá anseo sa Teach, ach ní shin le rá nach féidir athbhreithniú a dhéanamh ar na scéimeanna go ginearálta.
122 Deputy Dan Neville asked the Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs when Irish speakers here can expect to have an Irish language newspaper available to them again; and if, in view of the fact that the closing date for applications to Foras na Gaeilge has passed he will ensure that Foras na Gaeilge will deliver a speedy decision. [34148/09]
As the Deputy is aware, funding for the publication of a weekly Irish language newspaper is provided by Foras na Gaeilge. I understand from Foras na Gaeilge that a new competition was advertised lately and that several applications were received by the deadline of 4 September 2009. Those applications are being assessed and I am advised that it is proposed to interview applicants on the basis of their written applications. I understand that it should be possible for Foras na Gaeilge to present a recommendation for consideration by its board in November.
Foras na Gaeilge is committed to the provision of a weekly Irish language newspaper and, accordingly, I understand that a decision will be made in the matter as soon as possible.
My colleague, Deputy McGinley, has said it often here that the loss of Foinse is a big loss to the Irish language and, particularly, to teachers and students doing the leaving certificate. They looked to Foinse for assistance. It is appalling that we cannot have even one Irish language paper. Will the Minister put pressure on Foras na Gaeilge to ensure that whatever grant aid is required by the group seeking to reproduce this Irish language newspaper is available and that Foras na Gaeilge announces quickly who has won the contract so that the paper can be up and running again before Christmas. The paper is a big loss to Irish language speakers, to the Gaeltacht and to the people who lost their jobs. I hope some of these people will be re-employed. Some of the people involved used to cover the Irish language issues in the Dáil. I hope the Minister will arrange everything behind the scenes to ensure the paper is up and running soon.
As the Deputy knows, I believe we should have an Irish language newspaper. I regret the events that led to the closure of Foinse, but the person offered the contract decided not to continue with it. In such a situation, there is no choice but to tender again. However, I have no intention of involving myself in an independent procurement process. The Deputy would be the first to complain if I did.
I would not, not in this case. Make sure the deadline they have given will be honoured.
Did the Minister ever hear the Deputy complain?
Never.
I have no doubt that Foras na Gaeilge will carry out this procurement process efficiently and effectively. However, it must follow the correct process. I would hope it will reach its deadline of bringing this before its board meeting in November, and that we will get notification afterwards. For very good reasons relating to tender processes, I always take the clear and unequivocal stand to the effect that I do not, in any way, become involved once they are advertised. It is in the interests of everybody in the House that I maintain that particular stance.
Nach n-aontaíonn an tAire liom — agus tacaim leis an méid a bhí á rá aige le Teachta Ring — nach bhfuil sé inghlactha? Tá an Ghaeilge mar theanga oifigiúil san Eoraip. Tá Bille teanga sa tír seo. Nach n-aontaíonn an tAire liom nach bhfuil sé inghlactha ar chor ar bith nach bhfuil páipéar nó foilsiú an Ghaeilge seachtainiúil nó laethiúil sa tír i láthair na huaire?
Anuraidh, bhí Foinse againn, bhí Lá againn, bhí Lá nua againn, agus anois níl aon rud againn agus tá géarghá go ndéanfaí cinneadh gan mhoill agus go gcuirfí liteartha ar fáil do phobal na Gaeilge, ní hamháin sa Ghaeltacht ach ar fud na tíre.
Mar is eol don Teachta do bhí páipear seachtaine Gaeilge, Foinse, ag fáil deontas, agus bhuaigh an chomhlacht chéanna, Móinéar Teoranta an chomórtas le páipéar a chur ar fáil do na blianta seo. Ansin, le cúiseanna ar bith go maith dó féin, tharraing siad siar as agus ní raibh éinne eile fágtha ar pháirc na himeartha. Ní raibh aon rogha ag an bhForas ach dul amach agus tairiscintí nua a lorg. De bharr an chóras tairiscintí poiblí tógann se sin am, ach táimid dóchasach go n-éireodh leis an bhFhoras seasamh leis an rud atá ráite aige agus go mbeadh sé in ann fógairt a chur amach tar éis an chruinnithe i mí na Samhna, go mbeidh páipéar seachtanúil ann i nGaeilge.
I take it from what the Minister says that he expects a positive outcome this side of Christmas. Do I hear him correctly in that regard?
Tá an cheart ag an Teachta O'Shea. I understand that several applications were received. Obviously I do not know their identity. I know nothing about them and neither am I aware of their quality. However, I understand there are several applications and that they should be able to come to a decision in November. That is the intention at the moment and they are reasonably confident they can achieve their target in that regard.
Written Answers follow Adjournment Debate.
