Mr. Senan Cooke:

Thank you, Chairman. I will be steering the discussion to community enterprise level, where real changes can be made and the benefits of the new strategy, infrastructure enhancements and all the other improvements at the higher level can impact significantly. There is, unfortunately, a sense of real helplessness in many communities in the context of high unemployment and forced emigration. For young people in particular, leaving college and seeking to secure employment is a daunting prospect. Our population is better educated, more business literate, more well travelled and well networked and more confident than ever before. However, families, clubs and communities are heavily impacted by unemployment and forced emigration. People have every incentive to get involved in efforts to improve the situation where the opportunity is available.

Community enterprise is often taken to be exactly the same as social enterprise, but there is a difference. There are different levels of enterprise support, namely, fully-funded employment, partly-funded employment and self-sustaining, profit-making enterprises. We are interested in the third of those. I have been a voluntary activist and researcher in enterprise development in the Waterford area since 1993, Dunhill being my local area. People have come from all over the country to Dunhill to discuss what can be done at grassroots level in communities.

Community enterprise is not just social enterprise, which brings up a whole range of problems in terms of a definition, about fully-funded employment, partly funded employment and third level which we are interested in is self-sustaining employment, profit-making enterprises. research from 1993

We have been invited to speak in communities from Kerry to Mayo and from Monaghan to Carlow. This proposal is a result of all that consultation and research. There is significant evidence available for anyone who wants to examine it that indicates that this proposal will work. The proposal is that a programme for economic self-reliance is developed which targets the creation of ten jobs in every community in the region. We all know that the modest target of ten jobs could be achieved if we mobilised all the resources available in every community, the business people, the farmers, the craftspeople and everyone else being the main resource. If that is achieved, we know that the community will have identified its own resources, developed a good relationship with the agencies, gained a great deal of confidence, built up a network and will go on to create 20, 30 or 40 jobs in the area.

We would hope that by empowering people in their own community, those with the biggest stake in the community would get involved, and it would only take one person in any community to start this programme. It does not need the involvement of many people. One person who is highly motivated could organise a business mentor group that would mentor individuals within that community to create the jobs.

We believe this programme would require a south-east enterprise development forum that would mobilise and co-ordinate the resources, pilot a variety of enterprise projects across the five counties for replication across the region, remove barriers to progress, establish a shared learning centre of best practice and projects, and maximise third level engagement directly with communities through joint funding and research.

We believe this programme would best work if local government agencies could be changed slightly but dramatically from being a support agency structure to a solutions enterprise structure. The difference between being a solutions enterprise structure and a support agency structure is massive, but not in terms of restructuring. It is a change of mindset and the introduction of skills. If we could get State agencies to become solutions agencies, there would be a dramatic engagement by dedicated, committed, highly qualified people living in communities who are watching helplessly their own communities, clubs and families being affected badly by high unemployment and emigration. This is something that would work and would be seen to work within the community, and instead of helplessness we would have hope. Instead of standing back, we would have full engagement. There are hundreds of such examples throughout the country and perhaps even 100 in the south east. All that is needed is to identify them, establish best practice and get the best from the ones that are working and offer to assist the rest of the communities within the region.

Following the 1980s, the Programme for Economic and Social Progress 1991-1993 was agreed and from it emerged the Leader partnership and the county enterprise boards structures. They helped communities to make dramatic improvements across a range of developments from heritage to tourism to social and charitable initiatives. Those communities that organised themselves under the Leader partnership, the county enterprise boards and the local authorities are now ready to take the next step - which is a much tougher and challenging step but a necessary one - to create enterprises. A range of community groups in the south east and other regions are ready to take that step.

We need the Government and the EU to devise a complementary economic stimulus and it need not be in the form of money. If Leader II or CEB II, as it were - I do not know what is happening regarding the restructuring of local authorities - were brought in, through Government policy, to link up and engage directly with the communities on the ground, that would have a profound effect on the political atmosphere, on gaining respect for political institutions and for the local authority. All I ask is that the report would recommend that this proposal for community enterprise with the target of creating of ten jobs per community be investigated. The evidence is there to support it and if the proposal were investigated, it would be acted on straight away.