Mr. John O'Brien:

I have been involved in various guises in the West Cork Development Partnership since 1991. I joined as a young farmer representative, but, as committee members can see, I am no longer a young farmer. I have seen the growth and change in the dynamic of rural development in the past 25 years. It is a multiagency approach, involving the SICAP, the rural social scheme, Tús, the national walks scheme and others. It is about many organisations, supports, sources of help and handholding based around rural development. The Leader programme was integral to all of this. It grew out of the bottom-up approach, as outlined in Ray MacSharry's report in 1991 on CAP reform. The approach was that communities would feed into the dynamic and it grew from there. We have had many successes during the years. We have been lauded throughout Europe and worldwide as a successful deliverer of the Leader programme.

Can I say with bitter experience that we will now be delivering a Leader programme in Georgia and Russia, but we are no longer doing so in west Cork? The tremendous staff in west Cork have 130 years of collective experience. They have sweated blood over many years, but in the past week they have been thrown under the bus.

The non-adherence to corporate governance and employment law we have witnessed is a sight to behold. I warn everybody who is involved in rural development to be careful because it is a horrible place for us to be at the moment. As chairman of a board, I am dealing with staff who have been given three weeks to leave their offices. They are not even being given the courtesy of eight weeks. We will not be paid our final instalment of funding if we do not fill the boxes. No one can deny that the tremendous rural development experience in west Cork is ending awfully. There is an unfortunate dynamic as a result of a change in policy on the part of the past Government.

I would like to talk about the losses that will be suffered in the west Cork area from a rural development perspective. Of course we will continue the rural social scheme, the Tús scheme and the other schemes. All of those schemes grew out of the dynamic that was in play with Leader and the other rural development programmes. Leader was the mothership and the mothership is dead. I accept that there will be a mothership delivered from somewhere else. From what I can gather, it will be delivered from Mitchelstown, Midleton and Bere Island. The dynamic that has been in evidence at the offices in Bantry and Clonakilty, which have been delivering for the west Cork area, is dead and buried, unfortunately.

I will say one more thing about Leader. We are now in our fourth Leader programme. The stop-start approach to Leader is most unhelpful. When one finishes a Leader programme, one has to gasp for air for a year, a year and a half or two years while a new programme is initiated. Communities can lose the will to live during the lead-in period for funding projects and getting them up and running. They have to be fed their life energy again so they can get going. All sorts of projects come at them as they trundle along. Funding is withdrawn from some projects and given to other people who do not spend it. We have spent 100% of our funding through the years, but we have got little thanks.

I am sorry if I sound emotional about this issue, but I am emotional about it. There is a case study in west Cork in how to destroy a community and how to destroy rural development. Of course we will be told that rural development is going to be delivered by the local community development committees and everything will be hunky-dory and whoopadee-doodah. I wonder about that. I think there is a major lesson to be learned by Ireland Inc. in this regard. We are going to tell the story. Members are probably aware that the EU is investigating parts of what has happened. We will see.