Mr. Ian Dempsey:

I have to be careful what I say in respect of some of these issues. Mr. Collins mentioned the islands as having lost out. That is not quite the case. It is even more absurd than that, if members could imagine such a scenario. The islands are involved in delivering some of the Leader programme in west Cork but not on home territory. George Orwell at his finest could not do this but that is what policy is giving us. The Deputy is correct. I have to be careful what I say because our experience in terms of the selection process for Leader has been deeply troubling and that brought us to make a specific complaint about one element of that to the Commission. That has been reported in the media and, therefore, members can go and look at what that was. However, the issue does not rest there. I might just leave it at that.

The specific nature of the inquiry has been reported in the media and it is not an inquiry into us but into what has brought us to the position that we are in. Dare I say that that is policy. That will follow its own course. I do not know when it will happen, how long it will take or even what it will say but it will go to the heart of many of the issues that have been touched on today. The challenge for everybody in this process, whether they are practitioners, policy makers or public representatives, is to achieve the best outcome with the public moneys available to them and to be accountable for them. That is all I will say on that.

The Deputy referred specifically to a budget cut of €2.4 million and I understand other groups who are present were subject to cuts at that time. That arose in 2014 following an embargo placed on Leader funding for five months. I am at a loss to understand why the Department needed to place an embargo on the funding but that is what happened. That has an effect on the beneficiaries who are looking for support, whether they are engaged in enterprise or community development. When the embargo was lifted on 20 May 2013, we got an e-mail saying we were getting a budget cut of €2.4 million with no basis for that at a time we had €8 million worth of projects from potential applicants in the system. I say "at that time" because that was our fourth Leader programme and we had never failed to deliver them in full, based on the strategic thinking that was important at that time. It was never explained to us but that money went elsewhere around the country.

I would be loth to mention the areas but that money, in some cases, was never spent. Deputy Collins knows many of the individuals and communities who lost out in west Cork at the time. This is giving a sense of what happened in the previous programme. If we cannot get the Leader programme right, which is a key instrument in delivering development at local level, we have fundamental issues. I concede and recognise that the problems in rural areas cannot be addressed by Leader alone but if the primary tool for doing it is so deeply flawed and dysfunctional, we have a problem. I could talk about this all day but the committee would probably welcome that I did not.