Rose Conway Walsh (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am not a permanent member of this committee but when I heard Leader companies were coming here this morning, I was particularly interested. I have worked for 13 years in community development and I am very familiar with the Leader programme. I will set out my comments in terms of what I think of the major mistakes that have been made, whether they were made by design or by accident in how the Leader programme was rolled out. I will not speak about the money for a moment. This committee should play a role in a proper evaluation on how things are being done under the local authorities. I am talking about the mistake of bringing all of them into the scope of local authorities under the all-powerful might of the chief executive officers.

The Leader model in Ireland was one of best practice, recognised throughout Europe because it fulfilled the subsidiarity role that runs through all the European projects and the way it built capacity in communities. It built capacity in individuals, families and whole communities for a number of years, until it started to be interfered with. I will refer to the work that has been done throughout the country with the Leader projects and the national Rural Development Programme. I do not know who saw it fit to change the model so that it would come under the structure of the local authorities. Hundreds of people gathered around the country and packed out halls because of this. I attended several of those meetings. The ordinary people on the ground - the volunteers and those who had worked for years - pleaded with the Department and specifically those who were making the decisions not to go down their intended route under the local community development committees, LCDCs.

We have succeeded in creating a bureaucratic nightmare in the delivery of Leader when we had an excellent programme. It will not build capacity in people and it will add extra burdens to volunteers. It is wrong that it creates a dependency culture. The purpose of Leader was about building capacity and independent and single-minded communities. It is designed now to bring it in under the political system, create a dependency and have political interference in the decisions being made, and that is grossly wrong. It is something that this committee needs to keep a very close watch on in the duration of what is being done.

There are other issues. Have we been given the criteria for how the Leader programme is going to work with the CLÁR programme? Will I go through all the questions?