Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I have a question about the Western Development Commission. We live in a very funny country. One thing that is scary is that when An Coimisinéir Teanga resigned, the media were silent. The chairperson of the Western Development Commission has said he does not wish to be reappointed and outlined clearly in his letter the reason he does not wish to be. It must be great to be in government when there is media silence about such things. If that were to happen in an urban agency and affected Dublin, there would be wall-to-wall coverage. However, it does not mean that the substance of what has happened is not very serious. This is not a hangover appointment from our time in government. It involved the appointment of an ex-Fine Gael county councillor, a fine person. He was scathing about the Western Development Commission and the Government on the issue of rural development. Is it intended to give a serious role, teeth and money to the Western Development Commission to enable it to do its job or will it always be an excuse of an organisation that does not get any money from the fund and is using funds that could be recycled funds purely to engage in business development? What will happen to the commission? Will it be placed in the queue to receive unspent Leader programme funds?

Regarding the Western Development Commission, the Deputy is quite correct that the Chairman had two terms, effectively. He had part of one term and a full second term. He wrote and said he did not want to be considered for the chairmanship. I heard him speaking on "Morning Ireland" and I said, on the record of the Dáil, that when everything was outlined to him, in terms of the action plan, jobs and that the Western Development Commission was very much involved, he said that this was all news to him. I cannot be responsible for the Chairman if he was not involved in what was actually going on with the commission. The commission has a very important role to play, as do the regional and local authorities. Since the time when Fianna Fáil was in office, we have made changes and improvements to local government. The local authorities all have enterprise sections within their councils. The regional authorities have a very strong role with regard to the regions.

The Western Development Commission has a very important role to play. I have advertised the vacancies on the board and more than 80 people have applied. I hope to be in a position to fill the vacancies on the board soon. When I came into office, the chief executive of the commission had retired. I went to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and got permission to appoint a new CEO. However, I feel that there is no point in recruiting a new CEO until we have a new board in place. I want to give that board the responsibility of appointing a new CEO. As I said, we have permission from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform to appoint a new CEO and I hope that the board vacancies will be filled very quickly, now that applications have been received.