Mr. Christy Leyden:

I compliment the Minister for Rural and Community Development, Deputy Ring. I mentioned in my report that the current model for the role of his Department in the towns, villages and outdoors is to be replicated. The volunteers put all the effort in with the local authorities at the beginning and then the money comes to the county council, or wherever it is, and the volunteers are taken out of the loop. Compare that to what has to be done with a LEADER fund. The money has to be put upfront and one has to get the money, get a loan from Clann Credo or somewhere else and then work one's way through. My compliments to the Department because its model needs to be replicated right down to the county councils. That is where one finds good volunteers who are interested. Their interest is in achieving something for their own community and the work is in the beginning, working with the planning and that.

I love the town centre model that is there if we all can work together on it. The beauty about it from the point of view of a volunteer is that once the decision is made and the money is allocated, the volunteer sees the project working. He or she does not have to go back and start counting receipts and sending in stuff. That is where burnout happens. The burnout is caused by the considerable amount of bureaucracy at the back end. We could get volunteers who believe they are involved in building and achieving things. My compliments to the Department. Those two particular funding streams I am talking about are particularly useful in the way they are managed, particularly for us. We get the streetscape, decide on a portion of it, do it, and see the end result. We work with the council on the end result but we do not have to go worrying about the funding. That is a huge plus. We compliment the group and the Department. That way of working needs to go back down into the county councils to cut out the amount of bureaucracy at the back end of managing projects.