Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Wednesday, 4 Jun 2014

Vol. 843 No. 1

Local and Community Development Programmes: Motion [Private Members]

Deputy Éamon Ó Cuív

I move:

That Dáil Éireann:

notes:

— the central role local development companies play in providing local services across Ireland, including the delivery of the Leader programme and social inclusion programmes;

— that local integrated development companies also provide supports across a wide range of areas such as rural transport, child care, rural recreation and youth development and administer schemes such as the rural social scheme and the Tús scheme;

— that approximately 1,900 people are directly employed in the sector, thousands of positions are supported by the schemes involved and some €50 million is due to be spent on the programmes in 2014; and

— that local and community development programmes have a central part in developing and supporting local enterprise and sustaining jobs;

further notes the Government’s plans to align local and community development programmes within local authorities from 1 July with new programmes due to begin in 2015;

condemns the:

— Government’s cynical failure to engage in real consultation with the integrated community companies; and

— erosion of local democratic structures in the Government’s local government reform; and

calls on the Government to:

— fully review the approach to the delivery of community services and programmes by these companies;

— protect funding for Leader programmes through 50:50 co-financing;

— ensure companies that are tendering for Leader funding under the new local authority structure would be obliged to have partnership structures on their boards and their headquarters in the area of the local authority in question to ensure community ethos and local representation are at the heart of the delivery of programmes into the future; and

— ensure these companies are used as a one-stop-shop to deliver rural services, including rural transport and community schemes, and continue to play a central part in sustaining the fabric of communities across Ireland.

I wish to share time with Deputies Dara Calleary and John Browne.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Is that agreed? Agreed.

Deputy Éamon Ó Cuív

We could spend all night arguing whether the changes the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government introduced to the delivery structures of local development companies were needed. We could also argue whether the new system he has introduced will add another layer of bureaucracy to a system which requires fewer structures, not more. When I was Minister, I inherited a strange mishmash of local and community development companies. Not all of the country was covered by the local development companies, LDC, programme and in some areas there were two companies operating. I simplified the system considerably to ensure one company would cover all of the territory of the State, that there would only be 53 companies that would be coterminous and, where suitable, a company’s boundaries would match those of a local authority. We also decided that many services, not only the social inclusion and Leader programmes, such as Tús, the rural social scheme, rural transport and FÁS schemes, could be run by these local companies. The local company would be a one-stop-shop in the delivery of State-funded community services.

The Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government has, however, taken a different route. I accept, reluctantly, that in practical terms with the bringing forward of the legislation the LCDCs, local community development committees, are a reality. However, as the process progresses, it seems to have run into problems which are getting worse. Before we get into a total morass, it is time to stop, particularly the tendering process, and examine the difficulties created. The local authorities do not have the capacity to deliver all of these programmes which means that they will have to sub-contract the work to other companies. The system sees the LCDC making the decision on a Leader programme which will have the Department over it and, in turn, Brussels over it. Where we used to have three layers, we now have four. I accept that this is the way it will proceed and that there is nothing I can say that will change the Minister’s mind. However, I hope he will listen to reasoned argument and, before it is too late, consider making some changes to the delivery of the local and community development programmes.

I believe having one LCDC in some counties is not suitable. For example, should the city and county of Waterford and Limerick have one LCDC? From sheer geography, one would say having one LCDC for County Cork is not suitable. Traditionally, there were problems with the Gaeltacht in County Donegal, including the Inishowen Peninsula which is as large as County Louth. County Mayo was always split. In County Galway, there was one Leader company delivering rural development programmes in all non-Gaeltacht areas west and east of the Corrib. Connemara and the rest of County Galway were as different as any other two counties. One cannot travel from Connemara to the rest of County Galway without passing through another local authority area, either that of Mayo County Council or Galway City Council. The topography and geography are totally different, as well as there being significant linguistic differences between the two. It covers a very large area, from north to south, from Ballinasloe to Slyne Head.

Before the Department proceeded to the tendering process, it should have decided the number of LCDCs there would be and consulted those involved. It was not good enough to allow county council managers or even councillors to decide. For example, there are 30 councillors in east Galway, as opposed to only nine in west Galway, which means that those in the east always have a majority. The Minister should examine the suitability of the arrangements put in place by local authorities. Where they are not suitable and the areas covered are too large, he should inform them to come up with more workable solutions.

There is no better organisation than Pobal for prescriptions and bureaucracy. I understand it has come up with a process whereby one tenders for lots, but no one knows what they are. For example, someone tendering to provide a service in County Dublin might wind up providing it in Tallaght only or in the whole of south County Dublin. However, he or she does not know because no one has decided what the lot should be. This has made the business of tendering incredibly complicated - it is like buying a pig in a poke. I understand various combinations and permutations have to be included in a tender to ensure that when lots are decided, they will fit into the Department’s constructions. It should have been done the other way around. Before the tendering process began, the Department should have decided the areas to be included and it would have been a straight bidding process, not a mind game, as seems to be the case.

Another issue that has arisen is that in some places local authority boundaries do not suit. In the last reorganisation of the programmes I brought most of them within county boundaries. For example, the programme for Ballyhoura is across boundaries. Duhallow is in a mountainous area straddling counties Kerry and Cork.

It is an area with its own clear identity predating the setting up of the counties.

We come then to an issue I have discussed with the Minister and for which he has a certain sympathy, namely, the islands. I am told in the arrangement that is put out - I do not how far the Minister went into the minutiae of this - that in the islands' case it will be up to each county to decide whether the islands can be treated as a group or whether the local authorities will grab the islands, so to speak. If I know anything about local authorities, they will grab anything they can.

Comhar na nOileán has been a successful Leader company and is also the channel through which the funding is given to the island community development partnerships. A special arrangement made was for it because of the particular role in the islands which is not the same as it would be in a town. I understand from the tendering process that it will be difficult for Comhar na nOileán to tender because the criteria are for a much more populous place than the offshore islands. For example, I understand that when it comes to Irish speaking areas, there is no linguistic criterion laid down even though the 20 year strategy for the Irish language is clear that it was meant to be an all-of-Government strategy spanning all proposals from Government and that all Departments, in making proposals, were meant to take the linguistic requirements of Irish speakers in the Gaeltacht into account when drawing up how to provide services to the people.

As I stated at the beginning, I do not want to cry over spilt milk, but I am a person who believes that it is important to try to get a solution that works locally. Of course, there is a temptation for those in back rooms to always want the tidy solution, for example, that county boundaries are sacrosanct, but the person who said that a tidy desk is a sign of a sick mind was not far from the truth because there are many human situations that do not fit the tidy desk syndrome. There is an opportunity here to catch our breath. It has not gone beyond the point of no return. As I stated, I am willing to accept that the local community development committees are in place, with the legislation having been passed by this House, but the tendering process we have entered into is highly flawed. It could lead to unintended results. It is more suitable for large operations which are good at tendering. Such operations might be no good at delivering programmes. Some of the most effective tenderers are not good on the ground or rooted in the community, but they are good in getting through what is becoming an ever complex web in trying to submit a public tender for any service, and I do not think that is what the Minister wants. I would have thought the criteria should include, for example, that the company should be forced to have its headquarters within the functional area in which it will provide the service and that it cannot be effectively an absentee landlord with a big headquarters far removed from the community in which it delivers the service. Of course, the most extreme such case is the islands. If one takes Comhar na nOileán out of the islands, one will destroy an effective company that not only has delivered to islanders in a way that no mainland company will do with the islands as an adjunct, but also has done something that has helped the growth of Dublin and all urban areas, that is, provided service jobs on the islands. It has certainly kept Inis Oírr very much alive. Would it not be an irony, when one thinks about it, if when all this is done we wound up with a situation where, instead of having these companies with their bases in towns such as Athenry and Kanturk, the services, for example, for rural Galway, under the rural development programme were headquartered in Galway city, as is the local authority, robbing the county of the jobs? It would rob the staff in such places as Letterfrack and Kanturk, in the far ends of their county, who have jobs in these companies of their employment. Would that not be a terrible irony that rural development funding would be going in significant measure to urban development rather than to rural development?

I hope that, instead of having a combative two days over this Private Members' motion, the Minister reflects on serious points we are trying to make. I suggest that the Minister would halt the tendering process, that we would return to the pre-tendering process, that we would address the issues I mentioned about deciding how many LCDC areas there will be and what would be suitable in the tender documentation so that it is user-friendly for those who have the practical experience of providing the programmes, that the Minister would refer this to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Environment, Culture and the Gaeltacht for examination, suggestions and consultations before he proceeds with the tendering, and that the current tendering process that does not kick in until 11 July would be suspended until the Oireachtas committee would have a chance to examine the implications of all the proposals and make cogent submissions to the Minister, Deputy Hogan, based on the widespread concern about how this project of his is proceeding.

Deputy Dara Calleary

I thank Deputy Ó Cuív for giving us the opportunity to discuss this issue. There is no need for us to be kicking this around the place, so to speak. Everybody on all sides of the House agrees with the phenomenal success of the community development sector since 1991, when the then Commissioner, Mr. Ray MacSharry, initially rolled out the Leader model which has developed into many other community delivery projects. The reason he rolled it out in that fashion then is as relevant today as it was in the early 1990s. I refer to the disconnect we witnessed again two weeks ago between the public and institutions, such as this House and local authorities. That disconnect has in many ways damaged the sense of community, meitheal and entrepreneurship in the same way now as it did back then.

The various Leader and community development companies managed to get around that because they were connected to and based in the community and their staff were of the community. The Leader programme and the various development programmes sparked a sense of enterprise, social cohesion and ambition within communities that otherwise would have been lost. If we continue to go the way the Minister is going with these proposed plans, I fear we will lose that enterprise, cohesion and ambition.

One of the difficulties in community and local development is that it is basically an alphabet nightmare, with, for example, LDPs and LCDCs. However, there is one project which stands out as a testament to the faith and trust in these programmes, that is, the Great Western Greenway. Last year, 200,000 people used that greenway, from Westport through to Achill, either walking or cycling. A number of landowners got involved, giving away their land to support that project, and that could not have happened without the trust in the rural social scheme operated by South West Mayo Development. The trust on the ground encouraged landowners to get involved in the project. The ability and acumen of the staff of South West Mayo Development and the ambition of their board, all of whom are from that community, for that project ensured there was innovation and there was a dream. It ensured that right along the greenway there are products, services and jobs that otherwise would not have been there. Mayo County Council was a fantastic partner in that project. Nobody takes away from its contribution, but the trust on the ground, the sense of ownership and the dream and ambition of the greenway belongs to South West Mayo Development in a way one does not get with a large local authority in a county the physical size of Mayo.

Through these new programmes, with the local community development committee, that trust will be lost.

The local board, which runs the development company, will be replaced by the LCDC which will have as many people on a countywide board as are currently on a local board.

The Minister has expressed frustration, and he has cause to be worried, about the burden of administration within some of these companies, as well as the financial issues, but local authorities are not necessarily in the best financial health to be held up as a model of propriety either.

We need to ensure that the work done to date will not be lost. I agree with Deputy Ó Cuív's proposal to draw back from this and try to give the consultation period one chance to ensure that people on the ground are in agreement with this going forward. If this matter proceeds in the way the Minister is currently going, it will be without local buy-in, input or support. The whole notion of local development would then be catastrophically undermined.

In a recent article in the Irish Examiner, the Minister said he was not privatising community services. He said these services were never undertaken by the public sector but by private local development companies. I have gone through the structure of many such companies with boards which, through articles of association, have to be drawn from various community organisations. They are community trusts and community-based companies, not private ones.

As Deputy Ó Cuív said, there is a danger in the tendering process that without that community basis, companies will tender but will not be able to deliver the service. There is a difference between preparing a tendering document and having the ability to deliver a service. Local development companies the length and breadth of this island are blessed with the quality of their staff's commitment and contribution. They are so blessed that the Irish model of local development is now put forward as European best practice. Representatives of recent EU accession countries are being brought here to see how local development is being undertaken at a time when we are about to destroy that very model by bringing it back in under the auspices of a local authority whereby that localism is lost.

The Minister said we are not going to lose that community involvement but I have gone through the proposed set up and we will lose it. The notion of having community representatives involved, as opposed to elected representatives - there is a difference - will be lost. The ability of that community trust which is so important in so many projects will also be lost through the broader local authority structure.

Can the Minister clarify the tendering process? I presume it is correct that the current development companies will be allowed to tender, but what other companies will be allowed to tender? Will private service companies, although not even in the county and perhaps based in Dublin or in another EU state, be able to put together a tendering document developing and delivering services remotely? Could such companies usurp the very model the Minister is trying to protect? What will be in the tendering process to protect a service provider's local integrity?

I know the Minister is constricted by EU tendering rules, but someone somewhere will have to stand up to them. Perhaps the Minister will get a chance later in the year to stand up to an EU tendering model that is so anti small companies, be they community ones or small and medium enterprises. If the Minister gets the chance to do that around the European Commission table he will have done a great service. Now is his chance to start by saying "No".

Deputy John Browne

Maybe he is not going there.

Deputy Dara Calleary

We should have a European model which supports local development. It should not be lost for the sake of some tendering rules which are utterly unfair and disregard the success of that model in the first place.

The Minister has made an argument concerning administration costs. There have been leaks to newspapers about the salaries of various CEOs, but moving them into county councils will not save a huge amount. If, as the Minister says, the local companies will be protected, then nothing will be saved. The majority of those companies operate very tight ships considering the effort and hours that staff put in, as well as the projects they take on. There will be job losses because this tendering model will not guarantee jobs. The Minister is trying to protect the skills we have but that tendering model will not protect existing staff who have skills that cannot be bought in the market place or replicated.

Protection must be given to existing companies both to deliver Leader and the LCD programme. They have both the required expertise and ability. In the previous cohesion round, we saw there were good people for tenders but when it came to delivery it did not happen. We saw the difficulties it caused for companies such as MFG, so we do not want that to recur. We cannot allow that loss of time and delivery space in communities.

The Leader programme was a beacon that sustained rural economies through dark times. We need it again now to sustain rural communities. We need the LCDP to give communities a chance and to help those who are left behind so they can catch up. In addition, we need the training opportunities it presents to communities and particularly to participants. The very schemes rolled out by Deputy Ó Cuív when he was a Minister, such as Tús and RSS, are now used as models in other programmes. They owe their successful ethos to the health of the local development sector, which is now under threat.

One of the lessons of the recent local elections is that rural economies are falling apart. The heart is being taken out of them by the move towards bigger urban centres. We can use the current network of local development companies to shout "Stop", as the late John Healy said. They can be an effective model to do that if we give them responsibility for rural services, such as a one-stop-shop for services, including local transport, rural enterprise and agricultural supports. In such circumstances, one could invest in those companies for the future of rural Ireland, or one can decide to adopt a tendering model which can be done anywhere by any entity with no connection to rural Ireland.

The staff and board members of local development companies have done this State very significant service. The Minister should allow them to continue doing so. In the coming weeks, he should engage with them to see if there is a shared way of moving forward. Everybody shares their aims, so this is the Minister's opportunity to deliver on them.

Deputy John Browne

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the motion before the House concerning the future of local development companies. As we are all aware, local development companies have played a major role in the development of rural and urban areas in recent years. The first such company in Wexford commenced in 1991. They have been very successful since then in providing facilities for people to establish their own businesses, as well as helping local communities in various ways.

It is important to defend the core community partnership ethos of local development companies in providing Leader programmes. Local development companies have played a critical role in supporting local enterprise, as well as providing services in communities across Ireland. The Minister's plans to subsume the programme into local authorities and contract it out will jeopardise the independence of companies involved. Instead of reforming local government, this measure will destroy a successful model of communities being empowered to help themselves. The Government should re-examine this matter immediately before the link between the companies and communities is destroyed.

I have serious concerns about this matter being handed over to local authorities. Will future allocations be ring-fenced for specific projects or will the county manager of the day be able to raid the fund for pothole repairs or other local government projects that are short of money?

Deputy Phil Hogan

There are some people who will not allow them to do that.

Deputy John Browne

That is the general concern of ordinary people. We all know about the huge waste of money in local authorities, but we are now going to hand over another block of enterprise to councils who will be the ring-masters. If the Minister goes ahead with this project - I certainly hope he does not - he should ensure that whatever moneys are allocated in future will be ring-fenced and that county managers will not be able to raid the kitty of whatever the Minister may decide to allocate.

I find it difficult to understand why the Minister is going down this road. He has visited many of the development companies around the country and has seen at first hand the tremendous work they do. In my county, Wexford, the boards have been doing great work in the past four or five years, and I am sure it is the same in every other county. Wexford Local Development, WLD, is a company limited by guarantee with a voluntary board of 24 directors, eight of whom are elected community and voluntary sector representatives. It is a not-for-profit company and the membership of the local community development committees will have far fewer community and voluntary sector representatives under the Minister's proposal. Much valuable expertise and many people who have been providing a free service will be lost under the Minister's proposal. It is a major mistake.

From January, the local and community development programme currently delivered by WLD will be procured by Wexford County Council through a public tendering process, raising the prospect of private commercial companies delivering the county's biggest social inclusion programme under the auspices of the local authority on a for-profit basis. Deputy Calleary referred to the tendering process. How will it work? There is a major concern that these companies will no longer be able to compete against private sector companies that are already providing such services. Companies in the EU - for example, in the UK and Germany - will be eligible to tender for these projects, and that is a major concern regarding the new board when it is established.

In my constituency, many good projects were funded by WLD. The Minister is also aware of this as he was briefed fully on WLD, visited some of the projects and recognised the important work it was doing in the county. WLD employs 81 people directly, with a further 450 people employed through various employment schemes such as Tús, community employment, CE, and the rural social scheme, RSS. What will happen to these people? I met 73 of them recently and they had no notion of where they will stand. There has been no dialogue or discussion. In a reply to a parliamentary question, the Minister told me the CEO was supposed to brief these people and tell them what was happening. However, the CEO and board are very much in the dark about what is going to happen.

Deputy Phil Hogan

They have been talking to us for 18 months.

Deputy John Browne

They are not in a position to tell the 73 people if they will be in work after 1 January 2015.

Deputy Phil Hogan

The election is over.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Deputy Browne has the floor.

Deputy John Browne

The Minister will be gone to the green grass of Brussels, I presume, and the best of luck to him. I have no problem with that.

Deputy Phil Hogan

Deputy Browne wanted to go himself.

Deputy John Browne

Had I stood for election I probably would have got the second seat. That is neither here nor there. It is too late now. I do not know whether the Minister is going to Brussels.

Deputy Phil Hogan

I do not know myself.

Deputy John Browne

Before he goes, he should tell the people employed by WLD and the other local development companies throughout the country whether their jobs are safe and what will happen when the funding runs out and there is a break between the old scheme being wound up and the new scheme coming on stream. There will probably be a three or four month time lag. What will happen to these people? Will they continue to be paid?

Communities will lose out on funding leveraged by WLD to complete community projects and deliver programmes and services to which Wexford County Council does not have access. This would be a major blow to communities in Wexford, which in 2013 benefited from an additional €3.1 million in funding leveraged by WLD. In 2014 or 2016, will there be €3.1 million available? I doubt it, and if so it will probably go to private enterprise or some other area through tendering for the schemes.

The powers that be and Brussels, as the previous speaker said, regard this country's model, which was established by former Minister, Deputy Ó Cuív, and others and is being destroyed by the Minister, Deputy Hogan, as the way forward. We are abandoning a scheme that is recognised Europe-wide as the model for other countries. We are putting it under the local authorities, and we all know what happens when they get hold of things. Many years ago when I was a councillor and the Minister was a member of Kilkenny County Council, the development projects were within local authorities, and it did not work very well. We established the county enterprise boards and local development companies because it was recognised that it was not working as it should have within local authorities. Local authority members and officials see their role as overseeing such matters as roads, planning and waste management, and they are not in the business of creating or developing jobs, other than protecting their own jobs within the structure of local authorities. That is why I am afraid the Minister's proposal will seriously damage the future of local development companies.

The Leader companies are local action groups which were established in 1991 to promote the development of their own specific rural areas. If one travels to any rural community, one will see the tremendous work that has been carried out by local groups. Local groups became active, got involved in working with the local development companies and had a sense of purpose, moving forward and doing things for their communities. I fear this will be lost because we have already received a communiqué from the Minister's office - I do not know if he has read it yet - saying that when the new county councils are established this week they need not nominate people for local development companies.

There were members of Wexford County Council in the previous local development companies and it worked very well. Why is the Minister sending a diktat that elected members of local authorities should not be on the new local development companies? We have seen too much of that, with Deputies and councillors precluded from sitting on certain boards. The Wexford local development committee has no Fianna Fáil councillor, only Fine Gael councillors, but it is working very well. Will the Minister explain why he is sending a diktat to the county manager not to put councillors in local development companies? It is not right, because the councillors were elected by the people for the people, and surely they have a right to make contribution to whatever new board structure the Minister is talking about.

The Minister comes from a rural constituency, Carlow-Kilkenny, is a former local authority member and is very aware of what happens on the ground and how successful the local development companies were under their own steam when they were autonomous. While he says the local authority will not have much power over them and that they are only being housed within the local authority structure, from what I hear, the county managers and officials do not think that way. We have a new county manager who sees himself as the driver of this new company the Minister is establishing, and this is where it will fall down. I predict that in a year or 18 months Wexford County Council or another council will be left short by the Government for road works or other local authority schemes and the county manager will propose to take €1 million from the fund the Minister of the day has allocated. We will have fireworks when this happens because we will see that the Minister's decision was not in the right direction and was not going to help job creation and community development.

When the Minister replies I ask him to specifically state that the moneys allocated to local authorities for this project be ring-fenced. County managers should not if they can get county managers on-side be able to hive off money for normal council projects.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Hogan, is sharing time with Deputy Heydon.

Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government (Deputy Phil Hogan)

I move amendment No. 1:

To delete all words after "Dáil Éireann" and substitute the following:

" - welcomes the overarching vision of Putting People First - Action Programme for Effective Local Government of a local government system leading economic, social and community development, delivering efficient and good value services, and representing citizens and local communities effectively and accountably;

- notes that following the publication in Putting People First of recommendations for enhanced alignment between local government and local development an alignment working group, including representatives of the Irish Local Development Network, was established to assist and advise on implementation;

- welcomes the structure of the local community development committees being established under the reform programme, which will facilitate full and comprehensive representation of all actors, including community interests, and whose membership will be decided in a fully transparent, representative and democratic way;

- recognises the important role of local development companies as part of these reformed arrangements, including continued implementation roles in programmes and the provision of supports across a range of areas;

- welcomes the Government’s decision to allocate 7% of the rural development programme, RDP, to the Leader element, 2% over the minimum required by the relevant EU regulation, resulting in an overall programme complement of €235 million for the 2014-2020 period; this, coupled with delivery of two Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine artisan food schemes using the Leader approach, results in a full Leader complement for the 2014-2020 period of some €250 million;

- notes that any entity that expresses an interest in delivering a RDP local development strategy using the Leader approach must meet the requirements of the EU regulatory framework, including that the entity should be a partnership of public and private local socio-economic interests where no single interest group represents more than 49% of the voting rights at decision making level;

- recognises that local and community development programmes continue to play an important part in national social and economic recovery, including in the provision of valuable social services, direct and indirect supports for enterprise development, and employment creation; and

- reaffirms the continued partnership between community representatives, local authorities, local development bodies and statutory partners in ensuring effective co-ordination and targeting of services and avoidance of overlap and duplication, placing services before structures.”

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this evening's debate and to set the record straight on a number of issues relating to the ongoing process of reforming how we deliver on our local and community development agenda. This Government has set out clearly its aim to position local government as the primary vehicle of governance and public service at local level. That role involves local government in leading economic, social and community development; delivering efficient and good value services; and representing citizens and local communities effectively and accountably. These were the cornerstones of our policy document, Putting People First - Action Programme for Effective Local Government, published in October 2012, and they have also been reflected in the Local Government Reform Act 2014 under which the recent elections to a radically streamlined system of local government have taken place.

Local economic and social development involves a complex set of factors, including public service inputs, employment, skills, investment, innovation, productivity and quality of life. Supporting local development involves fostering methods to engage local people in the process in order to promote sustainable development and participation. It is widely recognised, most notably in a recent OECD report examining the delivery of local development in Ireland, that the co-ordination and management of this type of integrated process at local level is a key function of local government.

Given the capacity and, in particular, the democratic mandate of local government and the enhanced role set out for it in Putting People First, it is entirely appropriate that local government would have a key role in local and community development into the future. It will ultimately ensure more efficient and effective delivery of local and community development supports and interventions at a local level, putting the needs of citizens first in the delivery of publicly funded programmes and services. It is this focus on citizen-centred outcomes rather than the protection of existing delivery structures that is my primary concern.

Far from eroding local democratic structures, as the Fianna Fáil motion suggests, the commencement last Sunday, 1 June, of the principal provisions of the Local Government Reform Act 2014 represents a major milestone on the path towards a reformed and improved local government system, which will represent its citizens and communities effectively and accountably, which provides the services that people need efficiently; and which works in a financially responsible way, achieving the best possible value for money. It restores key elements of local government removed by Fianna Fáil-led governments since 1977. Fianna Fáil, in effect, reduced local government to just local administration.

The structural and other changes in place since last weekend constitute the most far-reaching changes in the local government sector since the current system was established in 1898. At county and city level, this has involved the dissolution of local authorities in Limerick, Tipperary and Waterford and their replacement by new merged authorities in each case. At sub-county level, we have introduced an innovative approach to local governance in the form of municipal districts which, unlike the isolated town councils they have replaced, embrace all parts of the county, uniting towns and their hinterlands and dispensing with outdated town boundaries. Overall, the number of local authority structures has reduced from 114 to 31 and the number of councillors from 1,627 to 949. A key outcome of this reorganisation will facilitate the refocusing of resources to be used to improve front-line services and to enhance the quality of life in local communities for the future rather than maintaining duplicated structures.

It is important to emphasise that the reform programme is not just about structural reorganisation. A range of other new policy initiatives also came into operation on 1 June, including provision for an enhanced role for elected members regarding economic development and enterprise support; new regional spatial and economic strategies; stronger oversight of local authority performance; the dissolution of city and county development boards; and the establishment of local community development committees. A further central element of the reform programme is the positioning of local authorities to take a much more central role in local and community development, particularly to ensure the most efficient and effective outcomes for citizens and communities.

Before I advance any further on this issue, it might be useful in order to provide a context for the current reforms if I remind members briefly of the background to local development structures and programmes and how they have developed in the recent past. In 2002, the then Fianna Fáil-led Government established the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs against a background of concern at the multiplicity of structures and agencies through which local and community development schemes and programmes were delivered. There was an inherent danger of fragmentation of services and diffusion of resources, with the new Department inheriting a number of local and community programmes with diverse structures which had been operated under the aegis of several different Departments. The cohesion process initiated a number of years ago by Deputy Ó Cuív to address these issues resulted in a significant reduction of local delivery structures for a range of rural and local development programmes. The close to 100 partnerships and Leader companies operating until 2009 were reduced to a total of 53 entities providing full nationwide coverage, a figure that has since been reduced further to 50. This rationalisation was then to be built on in a subsequent phase of cohesion concerned with improving and joining up the outputs of programmes.

In particular, the then Government saw a clear need to redesign its community development and social inclusion programmes, particularly the local development social inclusion programme, LDSIP, and the community development programme, CDP, drawing on good international practice and providing for ongoing evaluation of the programmes. A comprehensive programme of redesign was implemented which streamlined the delivery of the LDSIP and CDP with the introduction of the local and community development programme, LCDP, in 2010. The reduction in overheads achieved would support the effort to maximise the impact of available funding at the front line. There was opposition, as there always will be, among some groups to the model for integrated service delivery and structures at local level, maintaining the status quo was never an option given the issues relating to the delivery of the previous programmes, the concerns of the Committee of Public Accounts about the multitude of structures in the system, the criticisms in the McCarthy report and the prevailing budgetary reality at the time.

In May 2011, following the formation of this Government, responsibility for community functions and the LCDP transferred to my Department. The LCDP is my Department's main community development scheme, covering all areas of the country and representing the largest social inclusion intervention of its kind in the State. Total funding of €281 million has been allocated to the LCDP since it was introduced in 2010 and all 50 local development companies are contracted to deliver the LCDP to the end of 2014. The current programme officially ended at the end of 2013, having operated for four years, but it is being implemented on a transitional basis for 2014 with a budget of €47 million, pending the roll out of a new social inclusion programme in January 2015.

Over the past three years, my focus has centred on building on the reform process that the previous Fianna Fáil-led Government had started. I am therefore more than a little mystified as to where Fianna Fáil is coming from with the motion it has tabled. As part of the programme of reform of local government, local community development committees, LCDCs are being established in each local authority area. These committees, comprising public private socioeconomic interests, will have responsibility for local and community development programmes on an area basis, including my Department's Leader and local and community development programmes.

They will develop, co-ordinate and implement a more coherent and integrated approach to local and community development than heretofore, with the aim of reducing duplication and overlap and optimising the use of available resources for the benefit of citizens and communities. I am trying to finish what Deputy Ó Cuív started.

In the specific context of local development, the primary objective of the alignment process, outlined in Putting People First, is to improve co-ordination of publicly funded programmes at local level, to reduce overlap and duplication and to better target resources at a time of significant social need. Looking back over time, several studies and initiatives under successive Governments have sought to identify or implement improved co-ordination of local development funding, including reports such as Better Local Government: A Programme for Change, 1996; the report of the task force on integration of local government and local development systems, 1998; and the Indecon review of the county and city development board strategic reviews and proposals for strengthening and developing those boards, 2008. In general, these initiatives did not achieve their objectives so, in many respects, it was unsurprising that the most recent report by the alignment steering group highlighted that challenges remain in terms of the multiplicity of agencies and committees that are supported locally, with the consequential risks around duplication, overlap, lack of joined-up planning and the need for better targeting of resources of publicly funded programmes.

The Government policy on alignment recognises that the capacity of all those involved must be mobilised for more effective delivery of services, the local authorities, local development bodies, other statutory partners, and the community sector. It is with this in mind that as part of the process I am introducing the new public participation networks, PPNs, which will greatly enhance the voice of the community and voluntary sector, in particular through their role in local community development committees, LCDCs. For the first time community is being recognised on a statutory basis. The PPNs will nominate people to LCDCs, and will include not just a community voice but also representatives of social inclusion and environmental interests. This is all part of the overall push for greater citizen engagement in the context of the local government reform programme.

For the sake of clarity, the House should be aware that there are approximately 700 people directly employed in local development companies to support the delivery of the Leader and local community development programmes, LCDPs, on behalf of the Department. The companies also deliver a range of other programmes and interventions under contract to other Departments and agencies, and this may explain some of the misinformation that Deputy Browne had when he spoke about the various rural social schemes and Tús programmes that will be effectively obliterated. These are managed by the companies on behalf of the Department of Social Protection, so perhaps he will address those issues to that Department. My Department's contractual relationship is with the individual companies which are in turn responsible for their own staffing and employment issues. Therefore, my focus has to be on ensuring the structures and contractual arrangements between my Department at the centre and the local delivery mechanisms are designed in a manner that ensures the most efficient and effective outcomes from the Leader programmes and LCDPs which are delivered on my Department's behalf. I would be failing in my duty if I did otherwise.

I fully recognise the strengths and capacities of the local development companies, which is very well articulated in the Government's policy document, Putting People First. As for all organisations involved in delivering services to the public, the prime focus of local development companies must be, first and foremost, on serving the public, rather than on retaining sole control of public programmes. We need to ensure value for money and, therefore, in accordance with the public spending code, best practice internationally, legal advice and ensuring the optimum delivery of services to clients, the LCDP successor programme will be subject to a public procurement process. I do not have any option. I must observe the law.

With regard to the delivery of the development programmes managed by my Department, as an integral part of the alignment of community development and local government, oversight of the LCDP will transfer to the local community development committees, LCDCs, within each local authority from 1 July next. The new social inclusion and community activation programme, SICAP, is one of my Department's key priorities and its budget for its first year of operation will be addressed as part of the 2015 Estimates process. The SICAP public procurement process will be a competitive process that will be open to local development companies, other not-for-profit community groups and commercial firms that believe they can provide the services to be tendered for to deliver the new programme. The LCDCs will procure the programme locally. All proposals received will be assessed in accordance with the assessment criteria notified with the tender documentation, and the contract or contracts will be awarded on the basis of that assessment.

The aim of SICAP is to reduce poverty and promote social inclusion and equality through local, regional and national engagement and collaboration. It aims to build on more than 20 years of local and community development work funded by my Department and its predecessors. It strives to build on the country's internationally commended history of local and community development activity and also aims to take account of international experience in recognising the need for local approaches to complement and add value to mainstream service provision in our public employment and education services. My Department is aware of the work undertaken in recent years by the leadership in energy and environmental design, LEED, and other divisions within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in recognising the value of local approaches to promoting inclusive economic growth and in recognising the role for local government as a key player in that regard.

Eurofound, the OECD, the International Labour Organization, the National Economic and Social Council, and the Economic and Social Research Institute, have all commented on the fact that the key route out of social exclusion is to support individuals to be in employment. Programmes such as SICAP can be beneficial in helping those most distant from the labour market to be better prepared for access to the labour market by working with them to enhance their educational and training capacity. This programme will prioritise supports to those who are unemployed, including those not on the live register.

SICAP is being introduced at a time of significant structural and policy change in the Department with regard to local government reform and the roll-out of the new LCDCs and the governance model for local and community development in each local authority area. SICAP is a substantial player in the change process as a key programme for which the new LCDCs will have management and oversight.

Leader, the community-led local development approach, has been a tool for the delivery of rural development interventions in Ireland since its inception in 1991, and will remain at the heart of the delivery of rural development interventions for the 2014 to 2020 programming period. The Government acknowledges the positive impact the use of the Leader approach has had on the development of rural areas in Ireland in the 2007 to 2013 period and recognises the part the local development companies have played in this. In the context of a more cohesive approach to the delivery of all local development interventions, it is important that Leader funding is part of a more strategic approach to supporting development in rural areas, and for that reason the Government is proposing some changes to the future delivery of the Leader elements of the rural development programme. The changes are proposed to achieve two main objectives, to promote a more cohesive approach to local development as outlined in Putting People First, which I have just outlined, and to address issues and challenges faced through delivery of the current 2007-2013 programme.

The added value of the local development companies' role in the delivery of Leader lies in their well-developed ability to empower their communities and support them to build their capacity to access funding through Leader. This role is, and will remain, critical to the delivery of Leader funding and ensures the quality of the interventions funded under the programme and the ability of these interventions to address local needs. For the avoidance of any confusion, I acknowledge that the current local development companies have well-developed skills and experience in this area in particular and I see them continuing this role in their capacity as partners on the LCDCs. I have indicated this to the local development companies on many occasions. I have met the representatives of the Irish Local Development Network and of the County and City Managers Association many times and have repeated these points to them over the past 18 months.

It is incumbent upon us in government not just to ensure the funding delivered through Leader supports high quality interventions that address needs locally but also that it complies with the processes of sound financial management and audit compliance. The Deputies opposite are well aware of issues around good corporate governance, financial management or lack of it in many of the companies, but I heard no mention of those issues in this debate. I suppose in some respects I am not surprised by that but there are issues that cannot go unnoticed when one is trying to reform the programmes we have now. We must take those issues into account when developing the new structures and models of financial management and proper compliance with the programmes because we are subject to audit, not just at national level but also at EU level.

The broader role currently undertaken by the local development companies involves the management of the administrative and payment processes that are also an integral part of the Leader funding process. It is in this context that my Department has experienced some difficulty in the current programming period. It is part of the job of my Department to mitigate risks to funding as far as possible, and I make no apology for this. We are dealing with European and Irish taxpayers' money and we must ensure the systems for the management of that money are robust. I propose to do this by amending the systems to address the challenges identified and experienced in the 2007 to 2013 programming period. I believe this is a sensible approach which will ultimately ensure a more efficient delivery of the funds in the 2014 to 2020 period. Primarily, this will involve ensuring the systems we use to deliver the Leader elements of the 2014-2020 programme are fit for purpose and that any entity contracted to deliver the Leader elements of the RDP has the financial and management capacity to do so.

In this context and in the interest of clarity, Ireland proposes to support the implementation of rural development interventions through the Leader elements of the RDP 2014-2020 at local level using a public private partnership approach.

This will form part of a more integrated and coherent approach to local development that involves community and local government organisations in leadership roles, guiding a more integrated and co-ordinated approach to the delivery of all funding, both European and national, at a local level.

The priorities at local level will be developed using a partnership approach that will draw on the skills and expertise of local public and private socioeconomic interests, including local development expertise, local authorities and community and voluntary organisations, in consultation with the wider population. These strategic priorities will then form the basis for programme-specific priorities in each area. This approach would see local authorities working in partnership with local development agencies and community representatives to design and implement local development strategies at local level, based on the strategic priorities already identified. Both strategic priorities and programme-specific priorities would form part of an overall planning process at a local level and this would be integrated with planning processes at regional, national and European levels, thereby addressing the need for a more integrated approach to support for rural development.

Such an arrangement also envisages the identification of a lead financial partner as part of the partnership arrangement. The lead financial partner must have the capacity to provide the financial support necessary to ensure successful financial delivery of Leader-type interventions for the duration of the programming period. This will address the significant challenges relating to the financial solvency and capacity of legal entities which were experienced in the programme period. The system also proposes to delegate the administrative checks required to verify expenditure to an independent entity with the capacity to ensure these checks are carried out to a consistently high standard at all times. The composition of the proposed public private partnership will be in line with the requirements of the EU regulatory framework and fulfil all the criteria necessary to be considered a local action group in both composition and ethos.

I am proposing to conduct a two stage local development strategy selection process providing the opportunity to develop this partnership approach incrementally and with full and comprehensive consultation to maintain the integrity of the community-led local development approach. The aims of these processes are to facilitate the development of robust, implementable strategies that address the needs of individual local areas and are complementary to other development processes at local, regional, national and European level. I am confident that the systems to be put in place will facilitate the effective inclusion of support provided though the Leader elements of the rural development programme in the broader local development context, while ensuring the efficient management of expenditure as required by the regulatory framework.

There has been comment on the need to engage with the local development sector. Let me put the record straight. Shortly after the Government published Putting People First, which included recommendations from the expert group on alignment, I invited the Irish Local Development Network to participate on the alignment implementation group which was being established to assist and advise on the implementation of the proposals approved by Government. The implementation group was to have two ILDN representatives, two local government representatives and representative from my Department and Pobal. In fairness to the ILDN, it wanted time to consider its participation, and the implementation group met without its participation initially. The ILDN then come back to my Department and indicated that it would participate if the name of the group could be changed from "implementation group" to "working group", if its terms of reference could be changed and if they could have an extra nominee. My Department acceded to all these requests. Since then, the group has met 11 times and, additionally, I have met them directly on three occasions, while my Department has had several further bilateral meetings with the ILDN representatives. The notion that there is not consultation or that there is no engagement is absolutely a false one. Any suggestion that I or my Department have not engaged in consultation simply does not stand up to scrutiny. There has been far too much inaccurate commentary on this and other aspects of the alignment process, not least during the recent local elections campaign. Despite all of that, it is important that there is clarity around the fact that the process is marching on, not least through the establishment of the new local and community development committees under the Local Government Reform Act and the development of the new SICAP and Leader programmes.

I wish to reiterate what I have said earlier in this debate and many times previously, namely, that the Government recognises and acknowledges the contribution of local development companies in the delivery of local development interventions at a local level. Equally, I want to make it clear that they form only part of a complex landscape that requires a more streamlined approach in order to increase efficiencies and ensure that all funding available at a local level has the maximum impact. The role of local government is widely recognised as key to the delivery of local and community interventions, and the aim of the local government reform and alignment processes is to strengthen this role for the benefit of communities all over Ireland.

I have assured the local development companies on a number of occasions that they will maintain a role in the new architecture that will support a more integrated approach to the delivery of development funding at local level. I envisage that this role will play to their particular strengths and I am absolutely convinced that the new systems will allow them to focus more on supporting the delivery of high quality development interventions at local and community level. It is with this in mind that I again request that local development companies continue to engage with the reform process, and I am glad they will meet my Department this week, as I firmly believe that the outcome of this will support us all to facilitate the sustainable, integrated development of communities across the country, an aim towards which I believe we should all be working.

I thank Deputy Ó Cuív for his constructive approach and also Deputy Calleary in regard to the matters they raised, and I will certainly consider some of the issues raised by them, of which I have taken note. Perhaps we can have a further engagement on these matters in the future. I assure Deputy Browne that all moneys under these programmes will be ring-fenced for what they are intended and not for filling potholes in Wexford, and I am sure his son, whom I congratulate on his recent election to Wexford local authority, will ensure that.

Deputy Martin Heydon

I thank the Minister for sharing his time with me on the important topic of this Private Members' motion. I welcome the overall funding package for the next Leader programme, which should not be taken for granted. Normally, when one fights for things, once they have been obtained, people, particularly those in Opposition, move on to the next fight without acknowledging, as in this case, that the securing of €250 million in funding has been a massive achievement by the Minister. The EU regulations stipulate that a minimum of 5% of the rural development programme be allocated to Leader, and Ireland has decided to increase its proportion to 7%, acknowledging the vital role Leader has played in rural development down through the years.

It is vital that greater efficiencies and operational savings are achieved in the delivery of the new programme. As in any facet of public life, we have had to cut our cloth to suit our measure across the board. We must ensure that we find greater efficiencies, minimise administration costs and maximise the funding available to support projects and local communities.

The Commission for the Economic Development of Rural Areas, CEDRA, launched by the Taoiseach last month, identified a range of areas of particular need that could be supported through Leader interventions. These include economic development, job creation, rural tourism, enhanced national communication initiatives to improve broadband and building community capacity. Broadband provision, in particular, strikes me as a particularly important issue. The Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Deputy Rabbitte, recently unveiled Government plans to extend fibre broadband to villages and towns around the country that currently have a significant deficit. This is a crucial issue in my constituency of Kildare South where people who currently commute could work from home a few days a week. That would have a massive impact on local communities and a knock-on impact on improving the quality of life for many people. If there was a way to allocate some of this money, for example, towards increased and improved broadband provision, that would have an knock-on impact on economic development, job creation and small start-up businesses where people could work from home, as many people who have businesses already do. The knock-on impact on local communities would be very significant.

I would like to reference some Leader projects that have already been undertaken in Kildare South, with which I have worked closely and directly. The Minister will be well aware of the community centre project in Suncroft, for which funding was sanctioned recently, and the Kilcullen child care centre that was allocated funding of €317,000. Mistakes were made along the way and there were delays and huge headaches for local community groups. As a local Deputy, I ended up being dragged into the middle and going back and forth between Department officials, the local community groups and the County Kildare Leader Partnership. The Minister is aware of the issues that I have highlighted to him. In the formation of a new Leader programme, we must ensure that instances such as those do not happen in the future.

Funding under the programme has had a positive impact. The child care centre in Kilcullen opened today. In Suncroft the development project is continuing apace. Only last week the community had a hugely successful "Strictly Come Dancing" event to help fundraise the last segment of the project, and it was a real example of community spirit. I am thinking of places such as Rathangan, which was granted funding of €500,000 for a community centre, and Castledermot, which was granted the same amount of funding. Deputy Calleary mentioned the heart being taken out of rural towns and villages. These were communities that were left behind in the boom that the previous Government, of which his party was a member, oversaw. When one meets people from Castledermot now, one does not hear them talk about derelict buildings or issues in their town but about a huge sense of community pride. The old school that has been redeveloped on Main Street has transformed the community, and this has brought out the best in the people. Castledermot has a population of 1,398 people, according to the last census, and the funding allocated of €500,000 has been a massive investment in that small community. Rathangan has a population of fewer than 2,500 people and Suncroft has a population of 735 people, and the funding allocated to those communities has made a massive contribution. What we are doing in terms of reform is adopting a citizen-centred approach that concentrates and gets the best return on such investment.

It has been suggested that local authorities are a problem and that we should avoid putting any services their way.

That has been the Fianna Fáil approach in the past, ever since it abolished rates in 1977, a decision that forced local authorities to go cap in hand to the Government. The establishment of local enterprise offices and the centring of a broad range of services therein will allow us to maximise the return from the existing local government structures and leverage them more effectively. I trust local authorities to use the additional powers they have been given, including those relating to the local property tax, to best effect. With greater power comes greater responsibility and accountability and this, in turn, will give us a much more accountable and fit-for-purpose local authority structure. The provision of community services and their administration should be undertaken through this improved structure.

I acknowledge the Minister's engagement with the Irish Local Development Network on its alignment implementation role. I take the opportunity to thank the local development companies throughout the country, past and present, for the work they have done in local communities. I look forward to seeing a stronger Leader programme into the future, a programme that will facilitate the great community spirit we have seen throughout the country in the past.

Deputy Brian Stanley

It is ironic that we are discussing the alignment of local government with the community sector when the Leader programme and the local development programme are being held up by the European Union as models of social inclusion. The European Court of Auditors, in condemning what is now proposed by the Government, has recommended that other member states follow the example of what was done in this country in recent decades. If the so-called alignment proposal is implemented, control of funding will be retained in local authorities but not - this is the key point- under the control of the democratically elected councillors. Instead, the control will rest with the county manager and there will be no certainty that funding will go to where it is needed most. In many cases, it will be used by managers to compensate for the drastic cuts in local government funding in recent years. The Government claims these cuts are being made to reflect the removal of water services provision from local authorities. However, the level of cuts is far greater than what is being spent on water services. Moreover, the revenue from the local property tax which was supposed to go towards local services such as parks, libraries, footpaths and lighting has been handed over almost in its totality to Uisce Éireann.

The attacks on the local community development sector are just the latest phase in the onslaught on local democracy and the community sector in which the Government is engaged. These attacks are happening, even though the record of local community development companies and the Leader programme speaks for itself. According to SIPTU, the local community development programme dealt with 47,792 cases in 2012. It was responsible for providing after-school and other outlets for 84,722 young people. In the same year 7,000 people were supported into employment and more than 18,000 took part in education and training projects. This is apart from the 1,900 people directly employed in delivering the programme. That is a remarkable achievement, the evidence of which can be seen in every county. Of course, there are examples of where the schemes have been less successful. However, I can speak authoritatively in saying the programme has been a huge success in County Laois, as I understand it also has been in the Minister of State's county. As I said, the Leader and community development programmes are held up as models of social inclusion by the European Union. The proposed alignment threatens to undermine all of this. Not only will it threaten the jobs involved, but it will also have a potentially disastrous impact on communities, with many being forced to curtail services or close them down.

The Fianna Fáil motion before the House does not refer directly to the issue of competitive tendering. It is a source of great concern that private companies will be able to bid for contracts to perform community work. There is no benefit in setting community groups against each other to compete for the same resources. Moreover, no private company should benefit from people's disadvantage. We need look no further than Mother England to see what happens to the community sector when this approach is attempted, with services formerly provided by voluntary and community groups farmed out to the private sector. That strategy has been a disaster across the water, where the authorities are now trying to pull it back.

It is difficult to envisage how the new structure will operate. I checked in recent days to see how it was panning out in County Laois and it is not a pretty picture. All of the changes are happening on 1 July, but there is very little of the infrastructure in place. Private companies, of course, will only be interested in making bids for schemes that are guaranteed to make money, leaving other schemes to bite the dust. In the five years of the Leader programme, the Laois Partnership Company has assisted 434 projects. In 2013 it assisted 150 people directly in returning to employment and assisted 119 small businesses. Some 108 children from disadvantaged areas are attending preschool and after-school projects. In addition, the company manages a local employment scheme and provides a vast range of training courses, many of which provide candidates with FETAC qualifications. The administration of all of these schemes is largely funded through the social inclusion programme. Without this funding, the Laois Partnership Company would be unable to administer dozens of projects. It is that funding which keeps the show on the road. Community employment schemes, preschool and after-school projects and everything else cannot be delivered out of thin air.

Local development companies have a strong voluntary ethos and their board members are volunteers. Unfortunately, as I said, the Fianna Fáil motion does not address the possibility of privatisation. Fine Gael is determined to go down the Thatcherite road which proved a miserable failure in Britain. What do members of the Labour Party, none of whom is here, have to say about this? Are they happy to follow their colleagues in government down that road? SIPTU is seeking to deal with the industrial relations issues and it is vital that the Department engage with it, through the Labour Relations Commission, to seek to address the likely consequences for workers employed by the local development companies.

I brought forward a number of amendments to the Local Government Reform Bill 2014, not to be mischievous but to highlight the danger of leaving so much power in the hands of county managers. If a local authority is fortunate enough to have a good county manager, everything will be fine. However, the legislation states in respect of the membership of the local community development committees, "The chief officer of the Committee shall, in consultation with the Corporate Policy Group, seek and select nominees to the Committee ... and shall submit a list of recommended nominees to the members of the local authority for their consideration". The punch line is in the provision which states, "The nominees shall be appointed to the Committee, without omission or addition, by resolution of the local authority". Do people understand this is effectively putting everything in the hands of the county manager? The Government's reform programme is supposed to be about taking power from county managers and putting it back in the hands of councillors. This provision stands that principle on its head and will seriously restrict local authorities. The Government has tied the hands of the 949 councillors elected last week.

Deputy Martin Ferris

Once again, I find myself in this Chamber challenging the Fine Gael-Labour Party coalition on its lack of consultation and erosion of democracy. This time we are talking about local development companies and the privatisation of the community sector. The reputation of community development companies in the allocation and administration of Leader programmes is second to none. All of us who have worked with them in locations throughout the country can verify this. Community development companies have 20 years experience and are a real success story.

The Leader projects have been a successful job creation mechanism in rural Ireland. Without them, many rural communities would be destitute at this point. From 2011 to last year, they created nearly 3,000 jobs.

They also assisted more than 6,700 enterprises and supported more than 2,000 tourism initiatives. Villages and communities, which were enhanced one way or another by Leader projects and funding, numbered almost 4,000 in those three years. The model was adapted by other member states in the European Union. It was a valuable tool to combat social exclusion and was a cost-effective job creation mechanism under democratic control of communities. Now we have a tendering process established which will do no more than pit community organisations against each other and leave the way open for yet another way to privatise something. If the profit margin is not thought sufficient, will they just disappear altogether?

The Minister, Deputy Hogan, is the whizz kid of privatisation and here is another example. His plan is to make community development another source of profit for the private sector. Is nothing safe from this drive for profit? Will we see profitability becoming the driving force behind these projects instead of the common good of the community and job creation in rural areas? We now have Irish Water. Remember refuse collection was privatised and there were waivers for old age pensioners and people on low incomes but they are gone. Local development companies are following that. Will child care, community supports for the vulnerable, youth recreation projects and those designed to include those who are excluded from communities disappear? That is a big question and I have no doubt that if we proceed along this route, that is what will happen.

The community-led ethos must be preserved with participants' needs being prioritised over profit. The changes to the way local development is organised will have serious consequences for the community and rural development programmes. Currently, the Leader partnerships, independent non-profit organisations, manage and administer Leader funding for development programmes and they do a damn good job. The planned changes will see the management of funding being transferred from the partnership to local authority-led entities and, as Deputy Stanley said, giving absolute power to county managers. Those of us who have been on county councils have seen good ones and not so good ones. Giving that absolute power to one person is an affront to democracy.

There is also a workers' rights aspect to these measures. If the LCDP is put out to tender, the fear is that it will lead to a race to the bottom, with private companies seeking to undermine pay and conditions with a view to winning tenders and boosting profits. What are the arrangements being put in place for any transfer of employment of workers? Will there be redundancies and, if so, who will pay the redundancy of workers being laid off?

It will also impact on the efficient delivery of the local services, currently run by local development companies. I fully appreciate the invaluable work that companies such as North and East Kerry Development do in supporting local organisations. The likes of North and East Kerry Development should remain the applicant body for Leader and the successor programme to the local and community development programme from this year onwards. I work very closely with it and with its directorship. It does fantastic work and has helped small companies start up. Such companies are far more important to the area I come from and to many areas in Ireland than the IDA.

It is mind-boggling to think that while the European Commission holds Ireland's community-led model as an example to the rest of Europe to follow, our Minister is proposing to replace our example of best practice with the centralised version of which the Commission is so critical. Local development companies should retain their independence and be allowed to continue their brilliant work in our communities.

I do not know if members of the Government are listening to people who live in rural isolated areas. If they were honest and truthful, they would relay to the Minister what I and others on this side of the House have been doing tonight that the way local development companies operate is invaluable to local communities and rural Ireland. To do away with them and to give absolute power to county managers will do an awful disservice to the people who put us here. Will the Government reconsider the road it is going down? Why tamper or do away with something which is working beneficially for everyone?

Deputy Áine Collins is shaking her head but she knows as much as I do, given the areas from which she comes, the value of local development companies, what they have contributed over the past number of years, the number of jobs they have created, the amount of work they do in local communities and the number of small businesses they helped to start up, but all of that will be taken away from them and given to one person as a result of what the Government is proposing.

I ask the Government to reconsider this proposal. In particular, I ask those who call themselves members of the Labour Party to reconsider going down the road of privatisation, although it is nothing new in that they have sold out everything since they went into Government. They will do anything for power. They have given up all the values and principles for which they are supposed to stand. I commend the motion put forward by Deputy Ó Cuív and his party. The removal of the partnerships and the local development companies is a retrograde step.

Deputy Mattie McGrath

I compliment Deputy Ó Cuív, a former Minister, on this motion. The first time I engaged with Leader partnerships was during the time of the former Minister of State, Liam Hyland. They have come a long way. I mention the work Deputy Ó Cuív did when he was Minister. The Government needs to listen to the people unlike what is happening now when they are being totally ignored. One would have thought it might have changed after 23 May when it was sent a salutary message but it is still not listening.

I compliment all the volunteers, the board members and the staff and management of the independent Leader non-profit organisations in Tipperary. The one with which I worked closely was South Tipperary Leadership partnership and I compliment Niall Morrissey and Martin Quinn, the chairperson.

The Minister, Deputy Hogan, should have some respect for county councils. Like everything else, the Government wants to privatise and punish the electorate. I have been saying for three years that the Government is trying to punish the electorate for keeping Fine Gael and the Labour Party out of Government for 14 years. The people gave them their answer last week but what did the Government do? It issued a diktat in Monday's newspaper attacking all the elected councils. It cut travel expenses, training courses and so on. It was a punishment. The sooner this Minister leaves us to go to Brussels, the better. He will not stand and face the people. I hope the Minister of State, Deputy Tom Hayes, and Deputy Áine Collins will face the people because they are waiting for them. They can shake their heads until they fall off but what is happening is downright wrong. It is blackguarding and bullying ordinary people and community projects. As the Minister of State, Deputy Tom Hayes, knows, there are hundreds of projects throughout County Tipperary but the Government is trying to close down the companies. It is a smash and grab raid by the Minister, Deputy Hogan, to get the money for his friendly county managers.

The document enabling the Local Government Reform Act 2014 was entitled Putting People First. What could be further from the truth when the Government allowed the closure of all the town councils and borough councils, including the town council in the Minister of State's town of Cashel? It locked them up and locked the people out of them. Is that putting people first?

The Government has continued tonight by attacking the Leader companies. The Minister of State, Deputy Hayes, should represent the people who elected him.

(Interruptions).

Deputy Mattie McGrath

I was present when the Minister of State, Deputy Tom Hayes, was elected in a by-election and he said he would represent the people of Tipperary but he has abandoned them. He has sold out.

(Interruptions).

Deputy Tom Hayes

We hear the same old rubbish.

Deputy Mattie McGrath

What about signing contracts that were never signed? The Minister of State, Deputy Tom Hayes, should be ashamed of himself as a Member of Dáil Éireann telling people contracts were signed which were clearly not signed.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

On this issue, Deputy.

Deputy Mattie McGrath

I received a letter today from-----

Deputy Tom Hayes

On a point of order, the Deputy is driving industry out of our county and it has been said-----

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

That is not a point of order.

Deputy Mattie McGrath

That is not a point of order. It is rubbish and balderdash and the people of Tipperary know that. We have lost Kickham Barracks, our mental hospital, our Garda stations and all our county councils and the Minister of State, Deputy Tom Hayes, is sitting in for the Minister, Deputy Hogan, who is fleeing to Europe, using bully-boy tactics and denying the people of Tipperary all the communities projects which were developed and supported by the Leader companies.

He did not attend the public meetings he was asked to in Nenagh or Clonmel to listen to the people, but he cannot hide all the time. The Minister, Deputy Hogan, is fleeing the country. The hiding ground for the Minister of State, Deputy Tom Hayes, is very scarce unless he goes into the mountains in Duhallow or up to Hollyford and escapes. What is happening is the devastation of rural communities. Did one ever hear such bunkum as getting private companies to tender to do voluntary work in communities? Private companies are driven by profit, and rightly so. We need them as well. There is a place for them but not in community development.

Deputy Tom Hayes

If Deputy McGrath did not rape the country like he did-----

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Please, Minister.

Deputy Mattie McGrath

The truth hurts.

Deputy Tom Hayes

-----and back up Bertie Ahern week in and week out; he ran him-----

Deputy Mattie McGrath

Could I have the protection of the Chair?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Please, Minister.

Deputy Mattie McGrath

The Minister of State should be ashamed of himself telling the people of Tipperary------

Deputy Tom Hayes

-----left, right and centre. He licked Bertie Ahern and ran after him. He was a supporter of his yet he stands up.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I will have to bring the debate to an end.

Deputy Mattie McGrath

He could not even get a meeting with the Minister for Health, Deputy Reilly.

Deputy Tom Hayes

He supported him.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I am on my feet. The Minister of State should not interrupt, please.

Deputy Tom Hayes

I must say this. Deputy McGrath talks rubbish. He is a man who backed Bertie Ahern.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

No, I am on my feet.

Deputy Mattie McGrath

Could I finish?

Deputy Tom Hayes

Bertie Ahern was his saviour.

Deputy Mattie McGrath

This is disgraceful. The Minister of State will not debate on the radio or television. He runs, ducks and hides and when I try to make a contribution in the House on time I got from the Technical Group, the Minister of State tries to filibuster and interrupt the debate.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Deputy McGrath must speak on the motion.

Deputy Tom Hayes

I am surprised he got time from the Technical Group because it threw him out.

Deputy Mattie McGrath

He will not debate with me on any radio station but he will go on the radio and say a contract is signed that is not signed. He does not know what a contract is. He should get a lesson

Deputy Tom Hayes

The Technical Group threw Deputy McGrath out and Fianna Fáil threw him out. Nobody wants him, yet he is at this old carry on, left, right and centre.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Please, the Minister of State should not interrupt.

Deputy Mattie McGrath

It will not be long before the Minister of State is thrown out by the people of south Tipperary. They will have their say.

Deputy Tom Hayes

They do not want the Deputy. He does not represent our views. He should be ashamed of himself.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

That is enough.

Deputy Mattie McGrath

Could I finish, please?

Deputy Tom Hayes

Deputy McGrath should be ashamed of himself.

Deputy Mattie McGrath

It is a filibuster.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

In all fairness, the Minister of State should not interrupt.

Deputy Mattie McGrath

What does the Minister of State represent? He represents nothing only the big farmers, the landed gentry-----

Deputy Tom Hayes

Deputy McGrath should be ashamed of himself to talk like that about our county. I was in the Chamber long before Deputy McGrath ever came.

Deputy Mattie McGrath

-----and the people he gets planning permission for and gets their planning fees waived - his big friends.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Please, Minister.

Deputy Tom Hayes

You are a little rat running around the place.

Deputy Mattie McGrath

Excuse me. How dare you. I will not be called a rat by anybody and not by you.

Deputy Tom Hayes

I say it because that is what you are.

Deputy Mattie McGrath

Go back to school and learn some manners, please. Could I finish, please? I want that word withdrawn, please.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Okay.

Deputy Mattie McGrath

And I want my time. Two minutes of my time has been wasted.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I will give Deputy McGrath one minute. The Minister of State should withdraw the remark he made, please.

Deputy Tom Hayes

Withdrawn.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I appreciate that. Thank you.

Deputy Mattie McGrath

I did not hear him. I did not hear him say he withdrew the word "rat".

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Yes, he said that.

Deputy Tom Hayes

I said it three times.

Deputy Mattie McGrath

I did not hear him say, "I withdraw the word rat".

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I did.

Deputy Mattie McGrath

He did not say he withdrew the word "rat".

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

He has withdrawn that. I have asked him and he said he has.

Deputy Mattie McGrath

He is the man who told the people of Tipperary a contract was signed when it clearly was not signed-----

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Okay, let us talk about the motion.

Deputy Mattie McGrath

-----and he has the cheek to call me a vermin such as that. We know who the vermin are and the people of Tipperary know who the vermin are. They will know.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Deputy McGrath has one minute remaining.

Deputy Mattie McGrath

I appreciate that, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle. If I could be allowed to finish, this is the biggest attack on rural Ireland by the Minister - "Big Phil" as I call him. He is fleeing to Europe. It is an attack on community development and the volunteers that I salute and have worked with over the years, unlike Deputy Hayes, who could not be found. He was in Brussels or gone off on some other holiday. I stood with the people and will stand with them. This is not over. I have notice of a diktat for next Friday's council meeting on Putting People First. It is an instruction from the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government telling people that they are not to select members to sit on the boards at their AGMs around the country next Friday. Is that not interference by the Minister? The sooner he leaves for Brussels the better. The former Minister, Deputy Shatter, has already left. The Minister of State voted confidence in him. The sooner he leaves this country on board a ship the better because he has to get protection in Kilkenny. The Minister of State, Deputy Tom Hayes, will need it in Tipperary if he keeps going on the way he has done, trying to fool the people.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Could I ask the Deputy-----

Deputy Mattie McGrath

The Minister of State, Deputy Tom Hayes, besmirched my good name because his name might lag a little in the polls. He will resort to any tactics. Thank you, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle for trying to offer me some protection but it was an outrageous intrusion on the five minutes I had to speak.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Could I ask the Deputy to move that the debate be adjourned?

Deputy Mattie McGrath

I so move. I compliment the former Minister, Deputy Ó Cuív, on tabling the motion.

Debate adjourned.

The Dáil adjourned at 9.05 p.m. until 9.30 a.m. on Thursday, 5 June 2014.