Mr. John Coyne:

I shall go through some of the work that the forum has done and outline its background.

We finish off with some recommendations as well. We have sent in a written submission which I will not go through in detail but will rather focus on some of the areas. As the Chairman said, the company was established in 1989 to administer the poverty 3 programme and we are still here 25 years later. Obviously, we administer quite a number programmes. The area we cover in Connemara has a population of just under 40,000 and covers over 2,000 sq. km. Structurally, much of the territory is very weak with poor connectivity, low levels of demographic viability, poor digital infrastructure, poor transport systems and a very narrow economic base.

The company has always been guided by the principle of a bottom-up approach about which I would like to say something. What it really means is discussing matters with community groups, individuals and businesses within an area, carrying out an assessment of where one is at a particular time and where one wants to go and then formulating that into a plan such as the Leader plan or the plan for the delivery of the social inclusion programme. It also means going back to those community groups time and again and reviewing what one is doing. That is our understanding of the bottom-up approach. It is not what seems to be the understanding of some whereby one comes into a hall, tells people from the top table what one is going to do, leaves after half an hour and that is the bottom-up approach. There are a lot of people who believe that is the bottom-up approach, but in our understanding it is not the case.

Our board is a voluntary board of 23 members and the turnover for the last two or three years has been roughly €3.4 million each year. That is the average turnover of funding within the forum project. I will highlight a small number of the many supports we give to different groups. They apply throughout rural Ireland, I think. In setting out these supports, I highlight the value of Tús, CE schemes and job initiative programmes in the provision of these services. While one might have a manager and an administrative system, they cannot provide meals on wheels and other services. As such, Tús, CE and RSS are extremely important. We provide a wide range of services to older people, including meals on wheels, carer companions, support for carers' groups, laundry services, etc. One of our main services is a transport service. We provide both the buses and the personnel to provide a transport service to Clifden Day Hospital. The service brings patients in from throughout Connemara who have been referred by their GPs. We have provided the service for years and it is very effective. It is doubtful the day hospital would continue to operate if the transport service were not in place. Obviously, the HSE would have to find funding to provide it. It is a major service we provide to patients.

There is also an initiative between the LCDC programme and Leader which was established around therapeutic riding. The service started very small a year and a half ago and is expanding all the time. It involves the provision of a therapeutic riding service for people with disabilities to which some people refer as "physiotherapy on horseback". It has gone very well and involves quite a number of organisations such as Paving the Way, the Connemara Pony Breeders' Society, Forum Connemara Ltd., the Irish Pony Club, Ability West, Enable Ireland, the Brothers of Charity and all these types of people. The initiative has great potential into the future not only in Connemara but in other areas that would like to look at it. They are welcome to visit us in circumstances where they might want to establish something similar. We also provide many services for children and young people across 50 national schools and secondary schools. These include youth clubs, youth cafés, Coder Dojo, etc. The employment mediation service under the LCDC programme has assisted quite a lot of people with up to 80 annually being placed on the back to work scheme. Quite a number of those people have set up as sole traders in different businesses having been provided with a bit of training and a small start-up grant. We also have a lot of farmers availing of the green certificate programme, with 70 participating at the moment. They are all young farmers which is very encouraging indeed.

The current Leader programme has been cut by half from €427 million to €220 million. With about €30 million available for transnational and other specific programmes, it comes to €250 million. In the case of Connemara, it means we have less than half the money for double the area this time around. That restricts us quite a bit. If one was to take the Leader programme as one of the main economic drivers in rural Ireland, it is clear that it does not have sufficient money and is a very poor programme this time round. A lot of people will be disappointed because the overall funding will not suffice. Hopefully, the Government will increase the funding as time goes on. I would like to say something later on the rules and regulations on Leader and how restrictive they are. For now, I note that if one is setting up a reasonably big medium or large business, the de minimusrules that restrict aid to €200,000 over a three-year period are very limiting indeed. I acknowledge that it is an EU regulation, but it is very limiting.

I turn to the key challenges that affect us into the future. We have decided ourselves to stay on. We have €4.5 million for the Connemara region for the current Leader programme which is just beginning. We are one of three companies nationally to have retained legal LAG status. In other words, we did not go in under the LCDC because we want to hold the decision-making process within our board. This has a lot of implications for rural development into the future. The idea of bringing all this stuff in under a council-led committee means decisions about places like Connemara, west Cork and Clare will be made away from those areas. In our case, it would mean decisions being made in the chamber in Galway city rather than out in Connemara. We are very strongly of the view that local boards should be autonomous in making decisions on the local area. After all, they are the people who put the strategy together and they want to be the ones to deliver it. Clare and Kilkenny are following the same approach.