Mr. Jerh O'Donoghue:

I thank the Deputies and Senators for the honour of addressing them today. We come from the Sliabh Luachra area of County Kerry. Sliabh Luachra is a well-known area which is renowned for music and things like that. Some people say it is not a geographical area at all, but a state of mind and a way of looking at things. It is a place of creativity.

One way or another, in the 1970s there were two very creative events. One was that two brothers came together in the backyard of their house and decided to set up a joinery. That joinery has become one of the biggest in Europe. It presently employs 1,300 people, five miles away from our own area. It has been a massive success. The owners have a number of hotels as well.

At the same time, in 1975, a group of third-level students and I came together and decided it was time to launch a social group to look after people. We created what has become known as the Social Action Group Rathmore CLG. The purpose was to give young people a chance to become involved in community development, to make a difference in the community and to brighten up the lives of as many people as they could. We were inspired by the old meitheal tradition. Pat Spillane has talked about that a lot over the last number of weeks and has said that we should go back to the time of the meitheal tradition, when neighbours gathered to help neighbours. We have been doing it successfully since 1975, but in our case it is based largely on young people - students in the secondary school - and a few adult leaders.

In the first few years we did little things like setting up a vegetable garden and selling the produce or cutting and selling turf, but one of the most important things we did was to go into the psychiatric hospital in Killarney, St. Finian's. The whole idea was to break down barriers and remove stigmas. We, with other groups, did that very successfully. Before long, people were coming out to parties in Rathmore for the first time and we were going in to the hospital faithfully once a month. It made a massive difference.

In 1981, we felt we needed out own headquarters. We did not have any money at the time, so we approached An Chomhairle Oiliúna, AnCO, the predecessor of FÁS. One of our tactics has been to approach State agencies. They agreed to supply the manpower for our little building, our headquarters, our community centre, if I can put it that way. Then we had to supply the money. Our groups went north, south, east and west in cars collecting money. They eventually made the £57,000 required. AnCo provided the labour and the building opened as our headquarters in 1983. As part of our headquarters there was a disco room. From the very start we felt we should create a kind of a cash cow, something that would generate a traded income. We made hundreds and hundreds of pounds with discos that were attended by students from the local secondary school.

Around the same time, we were approached by a priest, Fr. Clifford, who was based in Killarney. He had done a survey of the conditions of old people in the Kerry diocese. He painted a dreadful picture of the conditions of many people who lived alone and he asked us to become involved. It was a pretty big challenge for just a group of youngsters, myself, and maybe one or two more people, but we decided we would tackle it. We hit on the idea of offering a service. Immediately we decided to offer a laundry. We contacted the Southern Health Board again. It provided the transport and paid a person to bring the laundry to and from the homes of older people. The youngsters did the laundry in conjunction with a local nun, Sr. Genevieve. It worked out great. The very first couple of weeks were tough enough because, as members of the committee can imagine, some of the clothes that came in to us could not withstand the rigours of the modern machines. They were left in a bad state and St. Genevieve occasionally had to go to Killarney to supply new clothes. Some old person said the nuns had great power after all because of what happened to the clothes and the, almost overnight, transformation.

That was very important because it began a hectic campaign. The home help paid by the Southern Health Board asked us to clean and paint houses. Eventually we went into dozens of houses and got essential repairs carried out, electricity supplied and water and toilets installed. It was a massive campaign over a decade and made a massive difference.

In 1990, we decided that we needed to do more. Some people were too isolated. They were living in bad accommodation that nothing could be done with. We decided to tackle the social housing. We contacted Kerry County Council and got on to the Department of the Environment. We became a registered company, got chartered status and were accepted to provide social housing. We got a site and built our first seven houses. We thought in the beginning that there was no way they would be filled in a rural area like ours, but when we went out looking for names we ended up with about 20. Our job then was to decide who would be the first seven to get a house.

We then said we would keep going and we looked for another site. Eventually in 1998 a site came up. The man asked us for £85,000. We had no money. We approached Clann Credo and it gave us the £85,000. We bought the site and again contacted the county council and the then Department of the Environment and Local Government. We built our 20 houses and a very modern, large day-care centre for the elderly. People are brought to the centre on a fleet of buses and a car and it has been a magnificent success. Not only that, but it has generated many jobs. Currently, we have 15 jobs of our own.

We still could not finish our waiting list. People were wondering what the nuns would do with the local convent. We approached them and they agreed to sell it. About three years ago we purchased the convent from the nuns. It is a beautiful listed building. We developed it at a cost of €1.1 million. All of the money was generated by our own fundraising, with the help of the Ring of Kerry charity cycle, from which we got €250,000. Is that sustaining the rural community? Obviously, it is. We have already generated 15 jobs locally. The man who won the contract for the convent was on the verge of collapse due to the recession. Since December 2015 there has been on average nine people working on the project every day. We feel that is one of the ways forward. We work with the State agencies and they generate money for us. We have a bit of experience now and we can make a massive difference.

As well as that, while I finish, we also decided to keep working for the young people. We have developed Teach Íosagáin - our headquarters since 1983 - a number of times since. We have added extensions. It is now one of the most modern youth cafés in the country and offers all kinds of services for young people. Again, one of the most important services is probably the disco hall. We do not believe in giving out money to DJs. We create our own DJs, one teaching the other.

That is basically our story since 1975, or part of it.