Mr. Michael Ludlow:

Meath Partnership was first incorporated in 2006. We are similar to other LDCs. We run the Leader programme, SICAP, Tús and the rural social scheme, RSS, in County Meath. We employ 28 people on a permanent basis to which we can add 16 supervisors attached to Tús and the RSS. Participants on those schemes are also employees of the partnership and, therefore, we currently employ 265 people under Tús and 16 under the RSS. As with other LDCs, we are a registered charity and we operate under a voluntary board and so on.

We also specialise in European funding outside of normal funds such as the European Social Fund and Leader, which comes from the Government. It is an area I would like to comment on briefly in the context of the creative sector. We are currently involved in 21 projects across Europe, which are funded directly by the European Commission. Recently we were awarded a €500,000 contract to assist with the integration of migrants and the contribution of migrants to the rural economy. We have five partners in five other European countries in this and, therefore, we will share in the work on this research. However, it is more than research; it is also about putting the learning into practice on the ground. That is a speciality area for us.

The various programmes in County Meath have had significant success over the past five years. Through Leader and another programme we are involved in, we funded 66 construction projects, the total value of which was €13.8 million. Very often, it is important not just to consider the grant aid provided to beneficiaries but also the total sum invested by them. That is where people will recognise the impact on the local economy. While Meath is not County Clare or County Kerry, tourism is of significant importance. Festivals and major events are important to us. We have invested together with festival committees a total of €4.358 million. An independent analysis of that investment shows that the return to the rural economy was a little over €13 million. The impact of these programmes is significant.

We work through networks to a considerable extent. We have the innovation business network, in which there are 87 member companies. We engage with them collectively in addressing the needs of microenterprise. We are also responsible for running the artisan foods of Meath network, in which there are also 87 members. Our investment in the network over the past five years was €1.285 million. We run networks in tourism with grant aid under Leader totalling €2.8 million. We also run the later life network which looks after the needs of older people in society. It is the representative voice attaching to the Meath age friendly imitative, which is a nationwide initiative. The bottom up approach at local level is driven by our understanding of the Leader programme and it is very much put into practice through that type of engagement arrangement at a local level.

I will address three aspects of the question we were asked to present on. Most of our effort has gone into looking at this to give as much assistance as we can to the committee. CEDRA recommends that the food and beverage sector should be supported to facilitate product development and access to export markets. The commission says the value of speciality food was €615 million in 2012 with approximately 350 producers employing more than 3,000 people. CEDRA also cites UK studies showing at £1 spent on local food generates £2.50 for the local economy. Those figures are conservative in the context of the artisan and speciality food industry. There are 87 such companies in our county, 30 of which received grant aid under the previous Leader programme. We welcome the increasing support of the food sector with LEOs having become involved. The local authority has also shown greater interest in this space. Producers that have expanded over the past five to seven years from a standing start with Leader support are moving into other programmes to take further steps down the road. In that context, I refer to the Enterprise Ireland-LEO engagement with SuperValu and so on. The vast majority of support in that sector is for training, not for capital investment.

The central message in comparing information across LDCs is that the Leader programme alone invests as much and has a budget as large as individual LEOs. More attention should be paid to the capacity of the programme to work within the food sector when all the agencies come together around the table to work on the future.

To avoid duplication, we see our role as working with nascent entrepreneurs who are establishing or trying to establish in the food sector. At this point in time, there are 57 such entrepreneurs in County Meath. I expect the position is similar around the country. They must be supported to a level where they can engage to good effect with Enterprise Ireland and the SuperValus of this world and provided with additional supports to enable them move into the export arena should they wish to do so. The softening of the position of Enterprise Ireland in terms of its heretofore only assisting export-only companies is welcome. This will enable further growth of indigenous companies who do not necessarily meet the export criteria. We also welcome the change made by the Commission and adopted by the Irish Government to allow for assistance via the Leader programme to SMEs in the food sector. We were able to meet the requirements of the last programme in terms of helping companies to grow past the €2 million point, in terms of turnover, and the ten employee target, but once they reached that point we had to opt, leaving a gap in terms of assistance between that and a company employing 50 employees, which was then the recognised standard for SMEs. In other words, unless a company was a 50-employee, €10 million turnover company, it did not have access to Enterprise Ireland supports. We need to ensure these gaps are closed-off.

In regard to the alignment process in bringing together the best of what is available to drive rural development, which I am sure the committee is familiar with, a massive amount of work has yet to arrive on the agenda of the local community development committees. The focus of local community development committees at this point is on the social inclusion programme and the Leader programme. The hoped for integrated approach has not yet arrived. We did expect that there would be an interdepartmental committee established as part of the alignment process and that the agencies funded by Departments, in terms of the programmes for which they would be responsible, would sit around the table of the local community development committees so that funding decisions would be based on a much broader knowledge of what is available, but that has yet to happen. It is hoped that it will happen.

The creative industries area was also examined by the Commission for the Economic Development of Rural Areas, CEDRA, in considerable detail. We had input into that process. We gathered further information which suggests that across the EU, 2.6% of EU GDP is represented by the creative sector. A lot of work has been done, commencing with the Amsterdam declaration in 2010, which has fed into European policy in terms of CCIs. Significant funding is available in this area. A pathway for the development of the creative sector has been developed, commencing with the Amsterdam declaration. The successful pathway to generating more income and greater output from the creative sector at a rural level has been sufficiently researched and it now needs to be funded properly. The Commission provides funding in this area but Ireland is not drawing down the funds. For example, under the culture programme, in respect of which €400 million is provided by the EU, the drawdown by Ireland was only €200,000. Under the FP7 - research and development programme - in respect of which €57 billion is available, there were only two successful Irish applications for relatively small amounts. This is very much the case across many of the EU funding programmes.

Local development companies are familiar with networking and sourcing the most appropriate funds. They also have the capacity to apply for funds. Currently, staff in local development companies are tied to individual programmes and so there is a lack of opportunity to seek other funding to complement mainstream programme funding. For example, in terms of SICAP, in the past additional funding could be applied for by local development companies to support that programme and that would be counted as a success whether it was European funding or otherwise but this is no longer the case. Likewise with Leader, because every moment of our time must be accounted for, if we spend any time making applications for other programmes, there is nobody to pay for that work. It is important that part as of the structure going forward, whether attached to the local community development committees or, as we would wish, attached to the local development company, space and funds would be provided to enable expertise around the making of applications and draw down from the European programmes. We specialise in this area. In one year there were only two successful applications to one programme, one by Waterford Institute of Technology and the other by Meath Leader Partnership. The next lowest application was in respect of Italy, which made 29 applications. Ireland has been a member of the EU since 1971 but it has not yet learned how to access these funds. This issue needs to be addressed. The local development companies have the expertise to chase down this funding. Given that role and funding for the specialist human resource required in that regard, we would be successful in it.

The tourism sector is critical to County Meath. The strategy----