Mr. Joe Saunders:

Go raibh míle maith ag an gcoiste as an gcuireadh a bheith leis an gcoiste inniu. I thank the committee for the invitation to join the meeting today to discuss the its preparation for budget 2022. We look forward to having a fruitful discussion and being as helpful as possible to the committee in its own deliberations.

In his opening remarks, the Chairman alluded to the breadth and scope of the ILDN activity and referred to the 49 members companies, so I do not propose to repeat that. I will start on one of the points to which the Chairman alluded, namely, the local development company response to the Covid crisis. The national footprint the companies have in delivering on a local community level allowed local development companies to be what we might term first responders to the Covid crisis, initially contacting tens of thousands of our hardest-to-reach citizens and thousands of community groups in the infancy of the crisis.

I thank the relevant funding Departments, particularly the Department of Rural and Community Development and the Department of Social Projection for the flexibility that was shown over this period which allowed local development companies to tailor-make solutions for their own particular areas and communities. This included deploying staff to FoodCloud and ALONE, filling in pandemic unemployment payment, PUP, forms for those without computer access or know-how, and providing food and medicines through the social inclusion community activation programme, Tús and the rural social scheme. At a human level, members will recall the days of the pandemic when there were difficulties for people visiting loved ones and those in their final days in nursing homes. We rapidly organised a virtual laptop visitation scheme for the loved ones with family members in nursing homes who could not access those homes in the Dublin metropolitan and surrounding areas. Our work also involved supporting social enterprises, whose income base had collapsed in the early weeks of the pandemic but whose services were required more than ever.

There was also the support of social enterprises, whose income base had collapsed in the early weeks of the pandemic but whose services were required more than ever.

In the first four weeks of the crisis, local development companies received an average of 2,200 pandemic-specific requests for assistance each day and they responded to each of these through the deployment of 1,400 staff and 980 scheme workers for tasks that were specifically associated with the community call in response to the crisis. A good example of this was the area of food poverty. Following the onset of social restrictions, FoodCloud and the ILDN came together to see if they could plug the gaps across the country where these existed. As a result of this rapid scaling up, local development companies collaborated with FoodCloud to set up food banks in 22 counties, mainly where this provision was not previously available. It also augmented existing provision in other counties. While food poverty was not new at this point, it had manifested itself in a new and extreme way which required a rapid response. This collaboration with FoodCloud was presented by Ireland as a case study at the recent OECD seminar on best practice in local development response to Covid-19. We also supplied staff through ILDN to FoodCloud distribution hubs in major cities, as well as distributing food countrywide to social inclusion target groups through Tús, RSS and SICAP, whose infrastructure and the availability of vans and storage facilities allowed this to happen rapidly.

Such responses have been based on a partnership between the State and the local development sector that worked very effectively. While there were significant challenges, and we would like to have done more and for more people, it is fair to say that local development companies, given their expertise and infrastructure, were not overwhelmed at that point. With highly skilled and experienced staff, they continue to be a sustainable agile delivery mechanism as this crisis morphs and, hopefully, settles. However, in many ways it is only deepening now and we will see the longer-term effects as time passes. Local development companies will play a key role in the ongoing well-being, mental health and community building that is now required and, crucially, in getting people back to work and assisting social life to re-emerge, albeit under new conditions.

Given the range of services provided by our members, as outlined by the Chairman, we will not speak to all the programmes today, but we wish to highlight a number of priorities which the committee might consider in its budget proposals. The first is THE LES. The Department of Social Protection contracts ILDN members for the provision of local employment services in 23 locations. Providers deliver a case-managed employment service for all jobseekers and this has been positively evaluated by the independent consultants, Indecon International Economic Consultants. Given the uncertainty in the labour market, the high numbers requiring activation over the next two years and the capacity available to the State through local development companies, we have reiterated our position that now is not the time to embark on a realignment of existing LES operational areas, as is being proposed with the introduction of a dual-strand procurement process. That will disrupt activation services at a time when they are most needed. ILDN has proposed that all local development companies that do not have an existing LES would be in a position to pilot an LES-type service reflective of the Covid-19 context and the changing socioeconomic profile. In this period, local development companies with LES contracts would continue to deliver the current LES, but provide enhanced services and do so for all jobseekers. This proposal offers an agile and affordable response to the inevitable high demand for employment services over the coming months and years. There is integration with existing rural employment and inclusion services where LES do not currently exist, no requirement to develop infrastructure ab initio and no disruption to existing services from a realignment of operational areas or the loss of skilled staff.

Moving to the LEADER programme, the next EU LEADER programme will not commence until 2023. To bridge the gap to the start of the next programme, a transitional LEADER has come into effect with a budget of €70 million to the end of 2022. ILDN and its members have warmly welcomed this allocation. The LEADER programme offers the ideal vehicle for the delivery of development funding to rural areas in the most effective manner. Community-led local development, CLLD, acts at European level as a multi-fund approach, that is, by joining different funding programmes and instruments one can achieve greater results. We believe there is merit in the adaptation of a CLLD muli-fund approach for LEADER to ensure rural communities benefit from all available EU and State supports.

Furthermore, it is important that the Government allocates the maximum percentage possible of Common Agricultural Policy, CAP, Pillar 2 funding and Exchequer co-funding for the purposes of LEADER. We regret that the ILDN and its members have not been included in the CAP consultative committee overseen by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, which is drawing up the new CAP proposals at national level. It is regrettable that those who deliver LEADER, an important element of the CAP budget, do not have a seat at this table and it is important that this committee is aware of this point and that it monitors how the CAP strategic planning process unfolds.

With regard to other activation schemes, particularly Tús, community employment, CE, and RSS, we believe it is critical to allow for maximum participation in these important schemes in the years ahead. The rural social scheme currently faces a critical juncture and an inevitable decline if impending impacts of eligibility rules are not addressed soon. There is a six-year rule in place, introduced in 2017, and its impacts are about to apply in early 2023. If left in place, this provision will remove 38% of the schemes, with just over 3,000 participants, in a three-year period, which will have devastating consequences for the scheme itself, those who are on it and the communities in which such valuable work takes place. Together with the 13% who will leave at normal retirement age, this means that over half of the scheme will be removed. This represents a cliff edge for rural communities in work undertaken, experience and leadership loss and a reduction in biodiversity by pushing landowners off the land and their replacement by more monoculture practices. ILDN urges the Government to review this rule ahead of budget 2022 and to bring forward reforms to protect participation in this vital scheme. Eligibility reform is necessary to ensure that the scheme survives.

Eligibility change is also necessary with the Tús scheme. Tús saw reduced numbers prior to the pandemic, but this was exacerbated by it more recently. A number of reforms to eligibility criteria and length of service on the scheme and, crucially, for improved referral processes are needed to ensure the programme stays at the heart of the State's activation options and continues to serve those most in need of this valuable work experience prior to their fuller entry to the labour market.

I will hand over the final part of our submission to my colleague, Ms Adeline O'Brien, who is the CEO of Empower in the Fingal area and chair of the ILDN social inclusion committee.