Arthur Spring (Kerry North-West Limerick, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome this Fianna Fáil motion. I have been a director of the North and East Kerry Leader Partnership in the past. At the height of my community activity, I was on the board of more than 30 organisations, but I have always said the Leader partnership was the best organisation in which I was involved for three reasons, namely, unity, community and funding. It had the capacity to achieve in areas where local authorities could not. There is an inverse relationship between responsibility and having access to funding to getting projects completed. Members find it frustrating that we do not have much funding as councillors. Councillors were left with less funding than people who were on local authority organisations.

My main concern is for the services provided by local development companies and the positioning of staff in the event tendering takes place. I understand this is an EU requirement in providing some of the rural development funds.

Deputy Thomas Pringle made a very valid point when he stated in the event that tendering must take place, why not limit it to just not-for-profit organisations? The service provided is so community based and necessary to communities that it is better people do it because they care about their community rather than to line their pockets also. I acknowledge there is duplication in the LDCs at present. I was on the county enterprise board and many people approached us seeking information on accessing funding. We suggested that in the event that they did not get funding from the county enterprise board, they should try the north and east Kerry partnership companies. Both organisations were doing much the same thing. A greater and more transparent level of responsibility was given to the county enterprise board but neither organisation was doing anything wrong so why would one have duplication? I can see the method in trying to consolidate these issues.

There is concern that local authorities would get their hands on this. I have made representations to the Minister, Deputy Hogan, on a number of occasions that if local authority members and management decide that spending this funding is at their discretion, we will lose the initiative established when the Labour Party was in government 20 years ago. It is imperative to keep the community base. There should be involvement with local authorities but the funding needs to be completely separate from what local authorities have for projects.

The GoKerry tourism initiative was started in Tralee with a view to developing it throughout the county and the first place we could access funding for stimulus and moving forward was the local partnership company. At the same time the local authority was not in a position to provide any funding or to endorse it because it saw it as doing something which a State agency, Bord Fáilte, was doing at the time. There are contradictions in what is being done at present. I would prefer to see the funding isolated as much as possible.

We must also consider best practice. The European Union Committee of the Regions has stated that Ireland has a very good LDC system at present. The UK implemented a tendering process and I have met people involved in trying to correct it afterwards. They felt the community was ripped out when it became a private tendering process. I urge local authorities and the Department to ensure as much as possible that the local community is at the heart of it at all times and that the funds are isolated.

A total of 1,700 people are directly and indirectly employed in this and they fear for their jobs. The tendering process must be fair and transparent but it can be done in a way which recognises what is being achieved at present, and the best people to meet these requirements are the existing organisations. It is incumbent that funding is provided in a transparent way and the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government has a hands-on role in this regard. From what I know, it has been prescribed that the people elected from local authorities to these organisations will receive no funding, which is welcome. At least it will be community based and will not be for the profit of local authorities and their members.

This is a good issue to discuss and I am delighted to have had an opportunity to contribute to the debate.

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