Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

Tralee AIT made a powerful presentation to the national monitoring committee recently. One of the speakers said they were doubters of the process but that it had worked. It is working because many different strands have been added to it and every allocation has had an immediate effect on the ground because communities are given confidence that they can influence issues. These areas have been prioritised under the dormant accounts fund, which gives them specific money to spend. We have pushed hard on the co-ordination. The Deputy referred to many statistics but both of us know it will not be easy to solve this problem. We have laid good foundations on which to build. The four or five communities involved would not want us to scrap these foundations and move in a new direction because that always happened in the past. They want us to build and improve.

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