Mr. Kenneth Jordan:

I might jump in but others may have something to add. We have a broad variety of experience across the Department. I joined the Department a couple of weeks after it was established. I know that the previous Minister and the current Minister have been very clear on that issue. There may be two issues. There is the idea of local authorities coming up with those plans in the first place and how they engage with communities. Then once they have been approved there is also the delivery issue. The Minister, Deputy Humphreys, has been very clear on the need to address both of them.

We have the town centre first officers. We are running the projects on individual plans for each town which are very successful and give towns the ideas for the different kinds of schemes we operate. Most recently we have been meeting local authorities with the idea of capital delivery teams. The Minister is very clear we need to resource local authorities in a way that allows them to plan. The current resource model is that they get an overhead on approved projects and it is about trying to switch the resource model for local authorities into a place where they actually get funding regardless of the amount of project funding they have drawn down. Hopefully, that will give them resources for planning. Where we take that is very much a matter for the Minister but that is the thinking on this.

The crux of the problem in one way is that the more funding a local authority gets, the more overhead it gets which inhibits the ability of some local authorities to come up with good plans and implement those. A different funding model would involve using the same amount of funding but allocating it across the local authorities. With that we would be developing networks. As the Cathaoirleach said, there are some local networks but the notion is to have a national forum once a year and twice a year bring people together at a more regional level and try to share experience. I have worked in the past on greenways and I know the success of greenways was very much built on that. The people who are really good at it started to share experience and then others could see the success of that. That is where that is going. I am not sure if that answers the question. It probably requires another few months of work on our side with the local authorities before we go back to the Minister to make sure the pathway we are going down is what is needed.