Paudie Coffey (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As we all know, it is under programme A that the vast majority of capital expenditure occurs. Such funding is certainly welcome in the many communities that benefit from it, whether through the LEADER scheme, the rural regeneration scheme, town and village renewal scheme, the CLÁR programme, the walk schemes, local improvement schemes and Tidy Towns. Every single county and community in the country is touched by funding from these schemes. It is important to constantly evaluate their success and ensure that we are getting value for money from them. I listened with interest to the Minister's comments about how some applicant bodies like local authorities or LEADER companies are better than others. We must develop and progress those bodies that are not performing as well as they should be because when they are not performing well, it is the communities that suffer. The Minister knows that and I welcome the fact that his Department intends to focus on it going forward. As I said earlier, it is a concern of mine. Communities depend a lot on expertise being made available to them through voluntary effort and some are better than others at providing that volunteerism. We really need to assist those that are lagging behind because these are the communities that need assistance the most. That is something that we all need to continually work on in terms of how the various schemes are working.

In the context of the rural regeneration fund, I wish to mention a couple of projects in my own county of Waterford in an effort to gauge the level of ambition expected of applicants. This is not a criticism but in last year's allocation, Waterford did not do particularly well. I suspect that the applicant bodies themselves will admit that they were not up to speed in terms of the ambition expected by the Minister and the Department. I have had this discussion with them and have met them since then. There are two very ambitious projects from Waterford under rural regeneration which deserve a mention. I am not asking the Minister to comment on them because I understand that departmental officials are assessing applications at the moment. One of them is in west Waterford, the Blackwater Valley application which is a unique collaboration involving LEADER, the local authority and five communities. Five different villages in west county Waterford are aiming to create an economic development zone in rural west Waterford. It is a very ambitious project which is seeking a lot of funding but if it is successful it will have a real impact in every one of those villages. I like the fact that it is a collaborative effort, with the villages working together to try to bring up the whole west county Waterford area. They are not trying to do it individually, in their own silos. They are actually leaning on each other, sharing expertise and sharing each other's unique assets to make it a more attractive proposition overall in terms of enterprise, tourism and rural development. It includes the villages of Cappoquin, Lismore, Tallow, Aglish and Villierstown. The project is very ambitious and the application submitted seeks funding in the order of €5 million. In his statement announcing the rural regeneration scheme, the Minister said that the Department was looking for applications of scale and sustainability that could really make an impact. This is possibly one such project because it will provide multifaceted benefits to an entire region of rural Waterford. The other project involves the Mount Congreve estate which recently came into the ownership of the State. Waterford Council has taken over the running of the estate which is a very unique rural tourism enterprise on the Waterford greenway, with which the Minister is very familiar. The Minister has travelled along the greenway himself. The project aims to build on the success of the greenway and extend it out into the new gardens that are being run by the council. These gardens are a unique offering in terms of tourism and attracting international tourist footfall. These two projects are currently being assessed by the Department and I am just trying to gauge whether the Department is interested in funding projects of that scale. Is it the intention to fund multi-million euro projects that can have a real impact? Under the town and village renewal scheme, for example, while there have been some success stories, most of the projects were very ad hocand standalone. The applications to which I refer are very collaborative and are co-ordinated across a whole region. I am hoping that is what the Department is looking for because that is what has been submitted. If these projects are successful, they will have a really beneficial impact on a whole swathe of communities across rural west county Waterford.

I also have a question on applicants who may be looking on but who are not as prepared as those that have already been submitted applications. Will this funding continue for the next few years? I ask this because communities are learning all of the time. My own community of Portlaw was successful in its application for €100,000 under the town and village renewal scheme. That lifted the confidence of people in the community and showed them that when an effort is made on small projects, great things can be achieved by working with the local authority, members of the community and other stakeholders. The same community is now considering submitting a larger scale application under the rural regeneration scheme, although not just yet. Portlaw is my own home town. It is unusual in being one of the only planned towns in Ireland. It was built by a Quaker family, the Malcolmsons. It was originally a mill town with serviced areas for the workers. It has a very unique social history. Unfortunately the old industrial site, of approximately ten acres, is a brownfield site right in the middle of the town.

As it is adjacent to the town centre, it is fully serviced. It has all of the main services available to it, but because it is a brownfield site, there was never any interest in redeveloping or turning it into the amenity or attraction it should be. It has tremendous potential. I am trying to encourage Waterford City and County Council to identify the positives attached to sites such as this, derelict sites within town centre areas that are an eyesore but which have huge potential to improve the social fabric of a community and turn that community's confidence around. Applications should be made under the rural regeneration scheme in respect of such sites. What are the Minister's views in that regard? This is a brownfield site which has been contaminated. When I was Minister of State at the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government, €200,000 was made available to make an assessment of the level of contamination. A roadmap could be provided to redevelop and regenerate the site. That is what the rural regeneration scheme should be about: regenerating derelict brownfield sites in the centre of towns throughout the country. I mention the site to provide an example. I am interested in hearing the Minister's views on whether an application could be made in respect of this site in the future.