Mr. Noel Spillane:

I will respond to the question on bureaucracy by way of an example. As a local action group, we work with the local community development committee. The current structure of Leader is such that, from the point of expression of interest to the issuing of a contract for funding, it can take between six to eight months for a project to be approved. In my view, it is ridiculous that a small community group or a small enterprise in a rural area looking for funding has to wait between six and eight months for a decision in that regard. One of the contributing factors in this regard is the manner in which Article 48 checks, which are an EU requirement, are carried out. It has been decided to centralise this process, which involves three checks, to Pobal. This mean staff in my office will have to scan files and send them to Pobal for checking, which strikes me as very inefficient. This could be rectified and the timeframe reduced by allowing the Leader groups to carry out the checks. If there are problems within certain companies in terms of doing those checks they should be addressed individually with those companies. The answer is not to implement a system across the board which imposes a high level of bureaucracy on everyone. What I have proposed is a simple solution to the issue of bureaucracy.