Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister and his officials and compliment them on their work to date, in particular on the Leader programme and its fantastic collection of projects throughout the country.

The Minister referred to the issues being faced by small towns in particular. Small towns have borne a huge brunt of the economic downturn. Does the Minister have in mind any specific initiatives to address this issue? He might also say what ideas have been proposed at the first batch of CEDRA meetings. I am interested in particular in a project in the Minister's constituency which is being run by the Kilkenny Leader company and relates to a food town.

On local government reform and the Minister's wish to ensure local government remains connected to local communities, how does he propose to ensure this link remains given the proposed substantial reduction in the number of elected councillors in rural areas in particular? How does he propose to ensure that wider electoral areas, and towns and villages on the periphery of these areas, will be at the heart of local government and will continue to have a say in the new set up?

On Leader going forward and the bottom-up approach, which has been the foundation of its approach, given that many of the local development companies are to come within the remit of the local authorities, how does the Minister intend to ring-fence that bottom-up approach to ensure it is not sucked into the local authority and lost within? The Minister mentioned local employment offices. The concern in this regard is how, given the enterprise function is being brought within the remit of local authorities, the Department proposes to ensure that they protect the enterprise ethos of the county enterprise boards and serve the enterprise client given they are not renowned as enterprise friendly organisations? The concern from all of the feedback from the various groups is that this will be lost.

On the national spatial strategy, will it be reviewed in terms of CEDRA and the overall local government review? Does the Minister propose to tweak it to try to make it rural proof? While we are developing a lot of regional centres throughout the country, I suspect this will be at the cost of smaller centres. Has the Department looked at this specific issue?