Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry South, Independent)
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I thank the Ceann Comhairle's office for allowing me this time. The pair of recently published reports on local government reform and alignment are only policy documents. While they appear to be Government policy, they are not yet legislation. Given the fact that local government reform is urgently required, it is strange and even farcical that the two distinct processes of reform and alignment are proposed to be implemented in the same timeframe. Surely local government reform is necessary before local government can even begin to take on a different role.

Both reports acknowledge that city and county councils may find themselves short of the skills required to assume an enhanced role in the co-ordination and oversight of local and community development programmes. This is the third attempt by civil servants to move the development and delivery of local services and programmes away from the community and voluntary sector. There were county strategy groups in the 1990s, county development boards, CDBs, in the 2000s and a new quango, socio-economic committees, SECs, is proposed for the 2010s.

Disjointed thinking is manifest in the reports. While the report on alignment recognises that the CDB is not the appropriate vehicle for the alignment of local government and local development in line with the report's recommendations, no clarification is given as to why the CDBs did not work and, therefore, while the SECs should or could work. Maybe we should not be surprised with the approach's inconsistencies, as no local development people or, most importantly, volunteer members of the boards were on the steering committee that completed the report. I wonder whether any of the committee's members volunteer in their communities.

In terms of the local community and rural development sector, the alignment addresses a number of issues, first of which is effectiveness and efficiency. EU reports consider the Irish model to be the best in Europe. The second issue is democracy and insufficient local authority engagement or oversight. The report implies that there is no future role for community involvement in local democracy, yet local authority officials and councillors are on the boards. The local development sector values its interaction with local, national and international politicians in supporting local communities or families with business ideas, employment issues, community issues, etc.

The third issue is accountability. Local development companies are answerable locally to their boards of directors and nationally to the Departments and the EU. The Leader programme has seven layers of inspections. The fourth point relates to bureaucracy. Although it is not locally imposed or EU-advised, the Department's interpretation of EU rules is restrictive. The proposals have a number of good aspects, for example, countywide planning, which should help all communities and agencies, and the recommendation on improved interdepartmental work. Some Departments, such as the Department of Social Protection, have not been kept fully informed of developments or made an input into the documents even though they are significant stakeholders in the local development companies.

The reports imply that the new local enterprise offices, LEOs, will be responsible for all enterprise funding. Currently, local development companies deliver a significant range of enterprise supports, including Leader, mentoring and grants. The local and community development programme, LCDP, supports area enterprises, allowances, Skillnets, etc. Per the 2011 LCDP progress report, more than 5,000 business start-ups were supported by local development companies last year. Therefore, alignment would not assist enterprise. Rather, it would hinder it, as local development companies have a reputation for and experience of working with people from the ground up, particularly in rural areas.

Phil Hogan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Deputy for raising this important matter. The local government document that I recently published set out a range of reforms that would place local government at the heart of economic, social and community development. This includes facilitating enhanced alignment between local government and local and community development programmes and functions. Greater alignment is primarily about giving the citizen a better deal and providing better services for our communities in the most cost effective and efficient manner possible.

I established the steering group to study this issue. Its report acknowledged the key strengths of the local development sector, including the sector's closeness to the citizen and communities, its track record of leading social inclusion and local and community development initiatives, and the local knowledge and expertise built up by local development bodies in service planning and delivery.

The steering group also recognised that there were certain limitations to the local development model. For example, there can be a considerable administrative burden, there is a potential for duplication and overlap because of the complexity of the local development landscape, there are many different funding and reporting arrangements, and demands and hidden costs are associated with the requirement on various stakeholders to participate in multiple boards and structures at local level.

I am confident that the introduction of SECs in each local authority area, as proposed by the steering group and approved by the Government, will bring coherence to the range of local and community development interventions at local level. In the long term, these committees will assume oversight and planning responsibility for all local and community development actions. They will ensure a joined-up, cross-government, cross-sectoral approach locally with benefits for local and community development programming that the city and county enterprise boards, CEBs, have been unable to achieve.

With the phasing out of CEBs and a more central role for local government in local and community development, local authority staff will assume greater responsibility for the oversight and co-ordination of local and community development activity. These changes will free up local development bodies and their staff to concentrate on front-line service delivery. We need a greater focus in this regard and more sustainable programme administration costs to ensure that the local and community development structures that are in place are viable in the long run. The new arrangements that we are introducing will achieve this.

I have no intention of introducing arrangements that would be detrimental to Ireland's local development model. We have a strong record of delivering local and community development interventions and we want to consolidate that record on behalf of communities, not damage our standing in this regard.

Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry South, Independent)
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With all due respect, the Minister's reputation for doing the right thing by certain sectors of society is questionable. He is doing away with fine, hard-working town councillors the length and breadth of this country who have served their communities well. Many are in his party. They will remember him well for what he has done to them.

Phil Hogan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael)
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I am quaking in my boots.

Niall Collins (Limerick, Fianna Fail)
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The Minister will be our next European Commissioner. He will not care.

Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry South, Independent)
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Local development companies work closely with county councils, but they operate in a different manner, as acknowledged by the reports. The retention of their autonomy from councils or any State body in facilitating communities to articulate their needs is imperative. There is a vague statement to the effect that the role and functions assigned to SECs should reduce the need for State representation on the boards of a range of local development entities and-or allow the phasing out of certain structures. This appears to suggest that the Government or its civil servants want to retain local development entities to do the difficult work with communities, for example, the night work and the donkey work, while funding will go to local authorities or, to be clear, the local county managers.

The most devastating element of the proposals suggests that the bottom-up approach will be dismantled.

Volunteers will be disenfranchised, disempowered, disengaged, disillusioned and disgusted, and would most certainly walk. It will take some time for a strong and well-resourced local community and rural development sector to get going again but it will happen because Government will not stop the people on the ground from working to better themselves, their families and their communities. The approach seems to be that local government and the local authority are broken, so we must fix local development. If we kill the roots, the tree will die, and the roots of community development are the communities.

I salute all the people who work in local development in all the different schemes, whether rural social schemes or otherwise, and all the different community groups which organise people to work on the ground. They have served our communities very well. I hope that in his endeavours, the Minister will not break something which is working. He is trying to fiddle with this in the same way as he has done with the town councils. In the past the rural train network was dismantled and the tracks were taken up but people now see that was a mistake. People will look back on the Minister's record when he is in Europe and will remember what he did on the ground. If the Minister stayed away from this and left it alone, it would be fine. Unfortunately, he is the Minister and we have to let him do what he is going to do.

Phil Hogan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael)
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For a good while, Deputy Healy-Rae's father propped up all those policies he spoke about.

Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry South, Independent)
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Deputy Hogan is the Minister now. He should not forget that.

Phil Hogan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael)
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I am glad Deputy Healy-Rae does not have responsibility now. Putting People First, the document I mentioned earlier, strengthens and refocuses the role of local government towards economic, social and community development locally. It is the Government's view that local authorities will have a central role in the oversight and planning of local and community development planning. I do not see the problem with that as the democratic input is important in every county, including County Kerry. I am sure Deputy Healy-Rae is happy that his brother is a councillor in Kerry Council County and will be able to be involved in the oversight and planning of the programmes to ensure they are focused and targeted in a way that-----

Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry South, Independent)
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The Minister is very worried about us all of a sudden.

Phil Hogan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael)
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The alignment steering group recognised the importance of retaining the bottom-up approach, as do I. In spite of all Deputy Healy-Rae's protestations, there is no intention to remove that approach towards community development. If Deputy Healy-Rae looked at many of the community groups throughout the country, he would have to ask the question why there is a such a divergence in administrative costs between the various groups. In some cases, the administration costs of some of our community development groups is 35% of all the funding going into them. That is not sustainable any longer. It should never have been the case. I want to see those particular costs devoted towards delivering front-line services for local people rather than building up a rather expensive bureaucracy. Substantial public funding is being spent on local and community development programmes. These programmes are not always sufficiently joined up to allow the most effective and efficient delivery of our services.

I assure Deputy Healy-Rae that rural development structures will continue and the community and voluntary sector will also continue to play a very important role in EU programmes, but they will be more aligned with local government in doing so and they will be more co-ordinated in their approach. The bottom-up approach, in spite of what Deputy Healy-Rae might say to the contrary, will continue under this approach.

Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry South, Independent)
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They will be consumed by the local authorities.

Phil Hogan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael)
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Deputy Healy-Rae's brother will make sure they are not.