Mr. Eamonn O'Reilly:

I thank the Chairman and committee for the invitation to attend today. We welcome the opportunity in circumstances in which the work of the Irish Local Development Network, or ILDN, is deeply entwined with the committee's objective of promoting viable rural communities. The ILDN is the representative body for the country's 49 local development companies, 35 of which operate in rural areas. We cover the whole country. Last year, local development companies supported between them more than 15,000 communities and community groups and 173,000 individuals by delivering approximately €330 million worth of programmes on behalf of the State. Of these, over 11,000 community groups and more than 83,000 individuals were in rural areas. Almost 6,000 rural dwellers found employment through the local employment service, of whom 3,116 moved to self-employment. More than 5,000 people moved onto Tús community workplace schemes and almost 3,000 provided valuable services on the rural social scheme. A further 1,500 plus are employed in social enterprises, which is what Dr. Cooke was discussing a couple of minutes ago, and these have been supported by local development companies.

The range of programmes delivered by local development companies allows for an integrated approach to rural development. Examples include LEADER, the social inclusion and community activation programme, or SICAP, the local employment service, RSS, rural recreation and walks schemes, social enterprise supports, social farming, Tús, education and child care and public health programmes. In addressing rural development, we will focus today on five key principles before inviting questions and discussion from the members. Some of my colleagues might come in at that point.

The first key principle involves the one-stop shop approach and innovative brokerage. Rural communities are increasingly confused and frustrated by the plethora of fragmented funding schemes which often have contradictory qualifying criteria and are released in an unplanned, ad hoc manner. Given their working methodology, local links and reputation, local development companies, or LDCs, are well-placed to signpost and co-ordinate rural and community development funding on a one-stop shop basis, similar to what LEOs do with enterprise funding. LDCs bring the added value of 25 years' experience of animating rural communities to participate and lead their own development. As a result of their work on the LEADER and other programmes, LDCs have a recognised experience of supporting, transferring and leading innovation in their regions. The ILDN proposes to formalise that innovation brokerage as part of its range of animation services and recommends that there should be one integrated rural development strategy for an area for a five-year period which covers LEADER and other national rural development programmes.

The second key principle involves community-led local development, or CLLD. The community-based, bottom-up methodology of LDCs is key to their effectiveness. This includes an emphasis on pre-development work, community animation, building the capacity of individuals and communities, as Dr. Cooke, again, mentioned earlier, accepting the individual's starting point and customising appropriate local solutions. The positive impact of LDCs in independent reviews of SICAP, LEADER, local enterprise schemes and the back-to-work area enterprise allowance testifies to the effectiveness of the approach. CLLD aims to promote integrated approaches of territorial development and offers potential savings and increased effectiveness in rural policy. The added-value of CLLD manifests itself in improved social capital and governance and enhanced social impacts. We welcome the fact that the EU is seeking to broaden the uptake by member states of the CLLD approach and hope that the Irish Government will incorporate CLLD across all EU programmes from the next round in 2020. Doing so would provide the kind of bottom-up enabling environment needed for meaningful social and economic development.

The third key principle involves recognising the specific features of rural areas. Rural social structures are changing and we must recognise the features of rurality that require specific solutions and be prepared to act on them. For many rural dwellers, the choice is to migrate, remain unemployed or underemployed or create his or her own job. That is why the impact of supporting more than 3,000 people into self-employment last year is so significant. I ask the members to imagine the headlines if one employer created over 3,000 jobs in rural Ireland. In addition, the local employment services run by LDCs placed 5,700 people in employment last year. As that service is operated in just a handful of rural counties, what is needed now is a national community-based, not-for-profit employment service which encompasses and recognises the nature of rural unemployment, underemployment and seasonal employment.

I move to a subject which Dr. Cooke covered in detail, namely, social enterprise. The 2013 Forfás report on social enterprise estimated that just 1.25% of the labour force worked for social enterprises in Ireland. The report stated that if Ireland's social enterprise sector were to approach average or mean EU levels of output or the goal set by the EU under the Europe 2020 strategy, at least 65,000 jobs could exist in the social enterprise sector here. With Dr. Cooke, the ILDN welcomes the forthcoming publication of a national strategy on social enterprise. The strategy must ensure that the appropriate resources and supports are made available to the potential social entrepreneurs in order that the potential identified by Forfás can be realised. I echo in that regard Dr. Cooke's call for the Government to seek greater EU resources for this area of investment.

I turn to social inclusion. The Department of Rural and Community Development has responsibility for SICAP, the national social inclusion programme. This a is a key programme to enable local development companies to employ staff and operate many of the other State programmes for which they receive no management fees. SICAP has suffered very deep cuts in the past eight years and requires a significant restoration of funding if it is to retain professional staff who have build up 25 years' experience.

The fourth key principle involves the current LEADER programme processes. All parties to the current LEADER programme have acknowledged the severe difficulties in its effective delivery. Notwithstanding the ILDN's anticipation of the problems introduced at design stage, member companies have worked closely with DRCD and LCDCs to ensure accelerated roll-out. Credit must be given to the Minister and officials for realising in 2017 that the programme was in crisis and implementing changes to the operating rules. While these changes were the minimum needed for the programme to function, more radical reforms are necessary to truly liberate the programme and should be considered in the context of the next programme. These reforms should include securing block exemptions for LEADER from state aid regulations, the facilitation of LAGs and LDCs to have full access to all the priorities of rural development programme funds, and a more facilitative approach to the inspection and monitoring regime which recognises that LEADER is about innovation and area planning and which acknowledges the risk element to that work.

My colleague, Mr. Rice, can address the issue of the autonomy of LDCs as local action groups delivering LEADER and how the change from the previous programme has elongated the supply chain of LEADER funding to the detriment of rural communities and businesses.

It is imperative that all parties learn from the current programme. The new RDP should provide greater flexibility for LEADER to be implemented as a genuine bottom-up approach to rural development. We also encourage the Government, the Department and this committee to ensure that the maximum LEADER funding is availed of through the Common Agricultural Policy, CAP. Overall, we will seek to secure a minimum of €400 million for the next LEADER programme.

My final point relates to smart villages. The Cork declaration in 2016 emphasised new approaches to overcoming the digital divide between rural and urban areas and to develop the potential offered by connectivity and digitisation of rural areas. Emphasis was given to the need for integrated approaches and the interaction between different policy fields in view of increasing complementarity and coherence. The concept of smart villages relates not just to being technology smart but finding ways from the bottom-up to avail of opportunities and address challenges across the whole range of rural life, including service provision, enterprise development and culture. There is much more potential in this approach and with local development companies implementing it, my colleagues will be happy to elaborate on this area.

In conclusion, we again thank the committee for its invitation and welcome the opportunity to discuss these and other relevant issues the members of the committee might wish to discuss.