Mr. Terry Keenan:

The Eurobarometer survey. In Austria levels of trust in local government were more than double those recorded in Ireland. Austrian local authorities are much smaller in size than city or county councils in Ireland and local and rural development programmes in Austria are delivered by independent, autonomous partnership local action groups. We believe strongly in the bottom-up approach which cannot be imposed from the top down as those at the bottom have to believe in it themselves. Those at the bottom cannot do this unless someone gives them the power, the structures and the know-how to do so and brings in people to help them to develop. If a county council builds a local playground in one place but the local community wants it elsewhere, the playground will be destroyed in two or three years, while in the alternative scenario the local community built playground will be looked after because people will have worked for it and bought into the project. It is about the intensity of the belief a community has for a building project. We cannot have people coming in and telling us what to do. How can someone else tell me what I know? He or she can conceptualise what my community wants, but if somebody is not digging at the coalface, he or she cannot tell the man who is doing the work how to do it. Somebody may have read a book or taken a degree course in the subject, but that is not the same as doing it. As Fran Cotton asked many years ago about the Irish rugby team, "You can talk the talk but can you walk the walk?"

A local community development committee such as Forum Connemara has been doing it for 30 years on the ground. We have built from a small seed and developed as we have moved along. Putting our local action group into the local community development structure would be the same as putting the IFA under the management and control of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine or putting SIPTU under the management and control of the Department of Finance. There are cross purposes and differing beliefs and ideas. The one who pays the piper calls the tune and if we were under the aegis of the LCDC, it would have the power and we would be told to tick boxes and go away. We were put under quite severe pressure to be under the LCDCs, but we stood up and fought. As Deputy Noel Grealish and Senator Trevor Ó Clochartaigh know, we are in the courts on another issue fighting for our survival.

Senator Maura Hopkins spoke about the CEDRA report and town renewal. One can repair the footpaths and paint every house in a town but without a viable living community, eating and breathing in it, it will be a ghost town. It looks lovely when one drives through it, but if people are not being empowered to help themselves, it will not be viable. Others can help, but they should not tell the local community what to do because one cannot help someone by ticking a box. People cannot help me if they do not ask and listen to what I have to say.

Senator Trevor Ó Clochartaigh is right that we have had a lot of programme deliveries, but we have had very little community-led local development. Programmes are one thing, but one must have buy-in to move upwards, rather than downwards from the top.