Mr. Stephen Rourke:

I thank the committee for the invitation. I am the independent facilitator of the PPN secretariat. I am accompanied by my colleague Donal O'Shea. He is the Laois PPN representative on the secretariat. Our network comprises 31 members, one from each of the 31 PPNs in Ireland. As members know, these correspond directly with the 31 local authorities. We would like to take about five minutes each to provide some information on PPNs, their role in the local democracy process, and the future development of representative and participative democracy.

PPNs were set up in 2014, ten years ago, following on directly from the community and voluntary forums, which many members might be familiar with and which already existed in local authority areas. There are generally three main focuses to the work of PPNs. The first is participation and representation, the aim being to ensure as many local community groups, residents' associations and environmental groups as possible are members of the PPN. Through that process, there is a mechanism to nominate and elect people from PPN member groups to local authority bodies like strategic policy committees, joint policing committees, local community safety partnerships, as they are now called, and local community development committees.

The second role is networking and information-sharing. Some of the PPNs produce excellent newsletters. The one in County Cavan comes out every week and the county council asked that all its employees be included on the mailing list because a similar type of newsletter did not exist in the county. With regard to what is happening in local authority areas, PPNs should have a role.

The third role is training and capacity-building. Many opportunities are presented, through relationships with organisations such as The Wheel and the Carmichael centre, for local community groups and voluntary organisations to be upskilled in various areas of interest to them.

There has been a significant increase in the number of PPN member groups over the past few years. There are approximately 21,000 groups affiliated to PPNs. Some PPNs, such as in Galway and Tipperary, have over 1,000 local groups affiliated. Recently, I have been doing some work with the PPN in County Meath. Last week, its number had gone up from 422 to 650, which is a 50% increase in two years. There is significant interest. It is estimated that over 600,000 citizens are involved in the work of the 21,000 PPN member groups. Some are quite large, like large GAA clubs, and others are a bit smaller.

With regard to local democracy, the PPN model of participatory democracy is quite unique in Europe. It is some achievement to be able to put in place a process through which perhaps 800, 900 or 1,000 member groups in a particular local authority area can – hey presto – can end up with two people in the SPC environment, three in planning and four in housing, in addition to people in LCDCs, county childcare committees, Local Link transport committees and the rest of it. Across the Border, there is nothing like that. I understand subcommittees of local authorities and district councils in Northern Ireland not only do not have any civil society representation from the social inclusion or community and voluntary sector but also do not have trade union representatives, trade association representatives or farmer representatives. The Republic's PPN model is quite special and unique.

There is great potential in trying to grow and develop PPNs over the next ten years. Last week, a letter was issued by the Ombudsman, Mr. Ger Deering, stating that he admires the excellent work being done by PPNs in building a network of community, social inclusion and environmental groups that work at local level and that he believes their role in empowering and assisting groups to participate in society and local decision-making is very important and relevant to his work in the Ombudsman's office.

Let me highlight what I believe to be the three main issues or challenges. First, there needs to be more equality and mutual respect within the membership of local authority bodies such as SPCs. Feedback from some PPN members suggests PPN representatives are not allowed to bring motions to meetings or add agenda items in the way elected councillors can. That is not the same in all counties; in some, PPN representatives are treated with equality. I hope that a key document that needs to be produced after the June elections, the SPC scheme document, which is produced by every local authority, will highlight the need for members, particularly PPN representatives, to be treated more equally in terms of being able to raise motions and agenda items.

Second, there is a need to move beyond the tokenism phase of participatory democracy to real empowerment. In a document that has been circulated, there is a reference to ladder participation, which goes from non-participation at zero to full empowerment and citizen participation at ten. We are at four or five, which is tokenism. We need to move beyond the mantra of a number of PPN members, namely that they are not being taken seriously, to the mantra that they are bringing about real and positive change. On paper, it looks good that civic society is represented at local authority level, but there is still a job of work to be done to address the impact of PPN representatives at local authority level.

Finally, there needs to be more awareness and understanding of PPNs, perhaps at executive level in local authorities and among local councillors. In the future, representative democracy through the ballot box and the participative democracy through PPNs can work more effectively in making local government better.