Dr. Breandán Ó Caoimh:

I welcome this review of Our Rural Future, and I welcome the open and consultative manner in which it is being conducted. Good policy stems from ongoing stakeholder engagement, not just when policies are being formulated or at the end of their implementation cycle but right throughout their delivery. Good policy is strongly associated with good governance, and in respect of rural development this implies ongoing engagement, co-decision-making, and power sharing with and among rural communities, civil society, the private sector, public bodies and elected representatives. Good governance is about nurturing and sustaining partnership processes in rural development. It involves harnessing the knowledge and social capital in our rural communities and supporting structures that empower rural citizens.

Our Rural Future rightly acknowledges the contribution of LEADER to the development of rural areas, and while LEADER is a programme through which organisations and projects are supported, it needs to be seen, celebrated and promoted as much more than that. LEADER is a way, a methodology and a mechanism through which the bottom-up approach is nurtured, and through which stakeholders pool their diverse, cross-sectoral expertise and devise and deliver strategic actions that are appropriate for their localities.

Autonomous LEADER local action groups, LAGs, and local development companies have been integral to the delivery of Our Rural Future, and I salute their animation and co-delivery of projects that have been, and are being, supported through the RRDF among other funds. I recommend further investment in their capacity to stimulate, facilitate and guide projects of varying scales. I also encourage investing in the capacity of the LAGs themselves, through core funding, training, capacity-building, internal evaluation and reflective praxis to support and sustain good governance.

LEADER is widely acknowledged for its contributions to rural development, yet its impacts, and indeed those of many other measures, are generally under-recorded or they are limited to mainly quantitative indicators. Through my associations with the North Atlantic Forum and the Canadian Rural Revitalization Foundation, I have seen first-hand the merits of qualitative methodologies, living laboratories, rural-oriented universities, action research, the arts and other innovations in capturing rural citizens' and other stakeholders' views, perspectives and experiences. I recommend a more holistic, engaging, and creative approach to embedding an evaluation culture within rural development.

There is high regard, especially internationally, for the seminal work done by Professor Jim Walsh, Brendan Kearney, Patricia O'Hara, and the late Packie Cummins among others, for their holistic reviews and advancement of rural development policy and practice in the 1980s and 1990s. The observations they made then are highly relevant in 2025 and I recommend we revisit their recommendations and embrace the inclusive, holistic and multidimensional approaches they pioneered.

Today, Ireland has fewer local action groups or local development companies than it had in the 1990s, when the population of rural Ireland was considerably lower. Moreover, during the past two decades, our State has gradually directed their territories towards geographical alignment with county boundaries that were drawn in the 16th and 17th centuries. It is evident that in order to give real effect to the first principle of the LEADER methodology, namely the area-based approach, we need to provide for a 21st century geography and to enable much greater innovation in the delineation of the spaces in which rural development is organised. This is particularly relevant in the west of Ireland, where the scale of counties is much greater than in the east, and it is especially relevant in the Border counties, as natural areas of development straddle the border with the North of Ireland. There is, therefore, a need for a more interjurisdictional approach to area-based development.

Rural Ireland is much more diverse and less homogenous than it was in 1988 when the EU White Paper on rural development was published. There is, however, a tendency not just in Our Rural Future, but in public policy more generally, to overlook geographical patterns across regions and counties. Maynooth University has been to the fore in mapping the changing dynamics of rural spaces. Harnessing the evidence that has been generated by their spatial analysis would allow for a much more strategic targeting of investments and a more bespoke delivery of initiatives. I recommend, therefore, the updating of the typology of rural Ireland. I also recommend the mapping of rural development investments, and an approach to evaluation that measures real associations, if any, between inputs, processes and outputs. We should resist the temptation to claim as successes or impacts deliverables that might otherwise have been achieved.

Mapping should extend beyond the policy domains covered in Our Rural Future. We need to map the totality of investments going into rural areas, and to track these investments so that we really know if there are synergies between policies. In this regard, I wish to refer the committee to the work of the European Spatial Planning Observation Network, ESPON, which, albeit some years ago, mapped the distribution of Common Agricultural Policy funds. I recommend that we undertake a similar approach in Ireland. The delivery of the national development plan and the national planning framework needs to contribute to the delivery of initiatives such as CLÁR, as well as the various support and investment mechanisms for our offshore islands.

In a current role, as an independent external evaluator of EU LIFE programmes, I have collected evidence of the symbiotic relationships between vibrant rural communities, the Irish language, and heritage and biodiversity. Farming with nature is working for farmers, despite what the agricultural industry may tell us. It is working for the rural economy, and it is working for the plant and animal species on which our health, well-being and economies depend. Such approaches need to be sustained, and I recommend mainstreaming and continuity, rather than a scheme-based approach to farming for nature, underpinned by proper payments to farmers that recognise the true value of ecological services.