Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

The Deputy's first question is valid but nobody has an answer to it. No matter what structure one puts in place, it is dependent on people. Some people are good and some are not so good. There is no logical reason for Kerry winning so many All-Ireland titles. The people are no taller, stronger or smarter than the rest of the country, although they think they are. There is something in the people and in the culture to make them succeed in Gaelic football.

The same issue arises here. We cannot create a system or structure that guarantees that everybody within that system or structure works efficiently. To a certain extent we must turn that into a strength, in other words, make it more competitive. The areas that get ahead will get more and the areas that do not could be shown up, which is the best way to get them going. A major finding in the report is that some areas are getting ahead while some are not.

The second issue is agencies. I am taking two approaches to that. One of the dividends of the cohesion process is fewer bodies in every county. I hope, therefore, that we will make fewer demands on bodies such as FÁS, the VECs and so forth to have to run from body to body. As a consequence, I hope they will be able to send more senior people to the few bodies that will remain. In County Meath, for example, there will be one Leader partnership for the county. Instead of four or five agencies, we will now only require one person to go to one meeting per month. That makes sense. However, the quid pro quo must be that it is somebody more senior who has more clout in the subdivisions within their own organisation to make things happen. There is a methodology behind what we are doing. People from the agencies must take responsibility.

I sometimes wonder if the second issue could apply to the House. Some of the debates that get headlines in the newspapers do not relate to what people come to me about, which is always houses, roads, social welfare and other practical matters. I am driven by the practical issues that affect people. Obviously, there are very poor housing estates. My colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Noel Ahern, in his capacity as Minister of State in another Department must carry out the big refurbishment of those estates.

With regard to smaller works, there is huge demand for the cleaning of estates, fixing boarded-up houses and getting them back into the market. There was a meeting of the national monitoring committee today at which we considered how we could do more for estates with the enhancement scheme. One of the frightening things is that we cannot spend the money. Amazingly, many of the people involved in estate enhancement have not yet spent the 2005 money, let alone the 2006 money.

To give them a better opportunity to plan we said we would provide the 2006 and 2007 money together. I was hopeful that some might spend the two years' money in 2006. In fact, the opposite is happening; the tendency is for them to spend the two years' money in 2007. It is an amazing world. People, particularly local authorities, keep telling us they have no money but when we provide it we cannot get the work done. There are issues in that regard and today we discussed ways of rewarding those who get up and going and penalising those who sit on their butts and do not deliver after all the talk.

The Deputy asked a valid question about extending the RAPID areas. The Ballyfermot area was separate so I will deal with that first. When the initial analysis was conducted, Ballyfermot qualified. What disqualified Ballyfermot was the fact it had been given a European programme called URBAN. Somebody made what I consider a wrong decision, that if an area is given the URBAN programme and qualifies for RAPID in every respect, it cannot participate in RAPID as well, even if it is the most deprived area in the country. It was a long process to get it right but Ballyfermot should have been in it on the first occasion. That is the reason it is included now.

The Deputy is correct that there are areas adjacent to existing RAPID areas that have a good case for inclusion. There might be new housing estates which did not exist when we started. RAPID is different from CLÁR. CLÁR is about leverage funds so all I need do is double the funds and double the area. It is quite simple. However, as RAPID involves prioritisation of mainstream funding across all Departments, if I double the areas I will dilute prioritisation by half. That is the challenge. If I ever get around to looking at extensions and adjustment of borders on the basis of new statistics, it will be in the 5% to 10% bracket. It will not be a doubling like CLÁR. If I doubled it, I would undermine the basis of the programme, which is prioritisation. It is not analogous to CLÁR, which is 90% about leverage funds. All I did in that programme was double the funds and double the areas.

Was there another question?

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