Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Mr. Traynor. On his last point, the whole idea behind the urban and rural regeneration funds was that communities would come forward with ideas rather than the Government providing another set of standard lighting or standard public seating in every village in the country and deciding that no matter what part of the country you are in, the streetscape would be exactly the same because that is what the grant is for. The whole idea behind those funds is to break that cycle so communities would identify what their needs are and, if it is a good project, the funding would match that. Maybe we need to take the traditional model in LEADER and amalgamate it with what has been happening with the urban and rural regeneration funds. The committee could recommend doing this as a pilot project in a number of rural communities and urban disadvantaged communities to give them a leg up and meet their needs.

On the philanthropy side there is a lot of merit in the possibility of developing a White Paper. Deputy Ó Cuív and Philanthropy Ireland have articulated very well the reasons for having a White Paper in this area. Have the witnesses had any engagement with the Government on this issue and have they received any feedback on it? The committee could make a recommendation to have a White Paper developed.

The purpose of, or spur for, this meeting was the meeting that Senator Murphy and I had with the Western Development Commission last March. There is bridging finance available for LEADER projects, which, if we are honest, are low-risk projects because detailed assessments are done through the LEADER programme. The difficulty is the lost opportunities that arise when other organisations do not get funding from LEADER. My question is for Ms Buckley and Mr. Traynor. What is their experience of the lost opportunities where grant aid has been provided from the State but the capacity to get bridging finance or matching finance is absent? One case that comes to mind is the perverse scheme we have called the just transition fund. This is where we provided grant aid to communities that had haemorrhaged jobs because of the shutdown of Bord na Móna and asked them to go and fundraise for the replacement jobs. It was the most perverse scheme ever devised in this country. We highlighted this at meetings of the midlands regional transition team. The just transition commissioner himself wore a path to the Department saying that this was amoral, yet nothing happened in relation to it.

Ms Buckley will know of some community groups that have very good innovative projects and will create employment and replace the lost jobs but they have been asked to put their hands into their pockets. After losing employment and wage packets, these communities have been asked to try to fundraise to provide replacement jobs. It is bizarre. Deputy Barry Cowen has articulated this as well. A number of communities across the midlands have got substantial grant aid but do not have the capacity to provide the matching funding and there is no mechanism for them to do so. What is the witnesses' experience of cases where funding has been allocated but cannot be drawn down because bridging finance or a matching local community contribution have been lacking?

The purpose of this meeting is also to ask how we can change this. Philanthropy Ireland has put forward a couple of suggestions for standardising the mandates, which would be helpful, and that it is made clear in State-funded projects that the funding is retrospective. That would not deal with the issue, however. The State wants these programmes to go ahead. It is committed to ensuring there is a just transition, communities have sports facilities, community centres around the country are retrofitted, and so on. The communities, however, cannot untap that without having another nest egg of funding. Many of them just do not have one. As Deputy Ó Cuív said, the communities that need the funding most are probably those that have been designated as deprived urban communities and do not have the human capital or capacity to provide that additional funding. We are actually compounding the disadvantage because they cannot get matching funding. How do we unlock that? Are staged payments part of the answer? Are there other innovative mechanisms that would allow that to be untapped that and would ensure the maximum drawdown of the grants?

We all deal with officials in the Departments, be it the Department of sport or any other Department, who are hugely frustrated with the lack of drawdown of funding. They are now trying to design the application process to ensure, insofar as possible, that matching funding is already in place. Again, that is a self-selecting process in that the communities that probably need those facilities most are the ones that will never get them because they do not have funding in place already. How do we address this challenge?

This committee wants to make a constructive set of recommendations, not just to the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, who is very willing to engage on this issue, but also to other Government Departments, to ensure the maximum level of drawdown and that the purpose of the grant scheme is fulfilled in delivering on those projects.

I will pick up on Deputy Ó Laoghaire's final point.

It is correct that the Western Development Commission has built up a body of expertise, particularly with regard to EU funding and supporting local authorities within its catchment area. It is not possible to go beyond that. Is there a role here for the regional assemblies or for the different regions, whether the Border region or other different regions around the country, including the southern region, to help local authorities or allow them to pool together to leverage some EU funding? Is there an opportunity for the Western Development Commission to share its understanding and knowledge of this with those organisations? Is this maybe a recommendation that should come from this committee to spur that type of engagement on?

Finally, we have had this meeting today because of the meeting we had last March with the community around Tulsk and Rathcroghan, which secured €495,000 to develop a marked walkway around Rathcroghan. It has done tremendous work in getting the 11 local landowners together to agree to public access to a series of monuments that have been there for the last 5,000 years. It is the ancient capital of Connacht, which has not been publicly accessible until now. The community is meeting more than halfway in getting access and agreement, yet it is coming up against a brick wall in getting the bridging finance to get this project over the line. It seems perverse again that the community has done the heavy lifting on this and has been rewarded with substantial grant aid from the State because it sees the merits of this, but because all the work has to be done before the funding can be drawn down, the project does not go ahead. We all lose out as a result. Maybe Ms Buckley, Mr. Traynor and whoever wants to come in after that can speak.