Phil Hogan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am glad the Deputy put the record straight. The Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government did not cause the problems in Mayo North-East Leader. They were caused by the company, whereby irregularities in procedure and practice were discovered and are now subject to investigation by the fraud squad. This is not a nice thing to be obliged to say about any company but under the rules from the European Commission and the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, one must comply with certain regulations for the rural development programme with which Mayo North-East Leader has not complied. The company is completely responsible for that. Over the past year and a half, the Department has been very patient and due process has been given. The fact that the document has been referred to the Garda for investigation for fraud purposes does not indicate a clean bill of health, far from it, but work is under way to try to resolve some of the issues. The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and the auditors for the European Commission have made progress in recent weeks on some of the issues that were raised.

I subscribe to the Deputy's remarks on the need for important projects to be brought forward as quickly as possible. I remind her that even though one must get approval for a project this year, one has until 31 December 2015 to spend the money and to complete the project. Consequently, a little time still remains but the most important thing in respect of the project promoters that are coming to the Deputy with ideas is to set up a system to allow them to get in for consideration and approval. Perhaps one way in which this can be done is to use County Mayo as an area in which the socioeconomic committee of the local government sector could be piloted. Hopefully, the Department will come to conclusions with the various community organisations with which it has been discussing these issues within the next couple of weeks. Were County Mayo to be prioritised, it would allow this structure to utilise itself as a local action group to be able to take applications and submit them to the Department for approval. I will give consideration to that on foot of the patience Deputy Mulherin and other public representatives have been obliged to endure in north-east Mayo.