Mr. Paddy McGuinness:

Arising from that, €2 million was allocated to the WDC from the CEDRA fund. The final straw for me was that, mistakenly or otherwise, that €2 million was put into a capital fund.

The Western Development Commission, WDC, could not use the money because we had no wish to buy anything of a capital nature. I spent the last 18 months of my term there as chairman trying to have that moved from capital expenditure to current expenditure. That has not happened to date. I leave it to the committee's assessment of how seriously we are taking it.

I thought when the committee kindly invited me to come here that I had better check if anyone else felt like this. I checked round with a few people in case I was just giving out. I checked with somebody who did consultancy work for the Western Development Commission while I was there. This person wrote back to me, saying, "I can well appreciate your sentiments on the matter. I always felt there was a real lack of engagement by the Department in the WDC's mandate. They are a talented bunch with much skill and knowledge". I can only emphasise that. It continues with "but I have never really been able to mobilise or utilise it to great effect, or when they have, they ultimately found themselves being suppressed by various actors." That has been my experience and that is my message here today. It is a good organisation which probably could achieve much, and is not taken seriously. I personally felt like an unwanted child. I am not sure what the reason is. Sometimes I think it is because the WDC was landed on our administration. It emerged from a campaign by the bishops, "Crusade for Survival". I think it has been, at best, tolerated rather than encouraged.

I hope that people on this committee will agree with some of what I am saying, take it on board, and try to have the whole issue of the decline of rural Ireland addressed seriously and increased in priority in political terms. I hope that it may cause a change of mind and mindset at official level. There are many programmes in existence. One person that I also asked said that it might be worth making the point to the committee that the Leader programme - that is the EU programme for rural areas - is absolutely strangled. A year since kick-off, there has still been no money approved because of the bureaucrats' fear that someone will make off with a euro. There are other comments from other people, but maybe I have said enough. I want to leave an impression and to try to convince people that I was an honest person with a good board and a really dedicated staff. The only time that anyone had any interest in what we were doing or not doing was on matters of governance. I do not think that is the way to motivate people or to get the best out of them. A long time ago, a much better author than me, John Healy, wrote No One Shouted Stop. Rural Ireland is declining. It will become a major issue, like the housing issue, if we do not address it now and deal with it. I ask people to begin to shout stop, or to begin to shout, maybe, start.

I brought some literature about the WDC which the committee may wish to have circulated later.