Mr. Tom Dowling:

The Chairman asked what the committee can do. The story the committee told in asking questions is what it can do. We want everyone to go out with a very positive message that everyone can do something for themselves. It is an easy request. When we met community groups in Galway a person said this is the simplest request ever made but the problem is to keep on following up and keep the council on board. We have liaison officers in every council as part of the Leader team or community department. We keep in contact with them and they are linked to the head office in Kilkenny. We keep talking to them. We want the people talking about it as well and saying positive things.

Communities are able to build community centres, crèches, and to run small businesses but they do not have a sense that they can create jobs. They have never got involved in enterprise development. They can fund-raise for anything, fight a cause, campaign against anything or for something. We want them all to campaign to bring jobs into their areas. I have spent quite a lot of time in the west but I am from the midlands and that is probably where my passion came from. If we do not get jobs into rural Ireland, the towns and villages have a serious difficulty. That is why we have to keep talking up this positive initiative. The councils are working with us. We want them to gather their community leaders and get out on the highways and byways and ask people where their relatives are working, what they are doing, whether they know what is happening and whether they can ask the question.

The relationship with the IDA is excellent. Our jobs are their jobs. We are part of the numbers it expects to achieve each year. We have a meeting scheduled with the chief executive of Enterprise Ireland in the next couple of weeks to see how we can add value to the work of the local enterprise offices, LEOs. We meet approximately 120 companies a month but only a very small percentage are suitable for ConnectIreland. We have to do something with the remainder of those companies. Some may be an idea that might never happen but they are going nowhere. We want to send them. That is where we can add value to the LEO work as well.