Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

It operates in Meath, Cork, Waterford, Mayo and Donegal. The Western Development Commission covers the Shannon and western areas and the county development boards cover the State. Everyone has access to development money.

Leader companies have been doing good work at the micro level and have enjoyed quite a level of success. There was a constraining factor in that I decided at the beginning to put all of the European money into Leader-type action instead of spreading it out to CLÁR and other programmes. This year, however, we got a good result in Brussels which means we will have three times as much funding per annum as we had in the previous national development plan.

I agree about the importance of the small food sector and we have been working with it. We have appointed a co-ordinator for small foods who has been on a yearly contract for the past three years. She has done fantastic work and the sector is growing by 10% per annum. With changing lifestyles and farming methods, it will be an increasing player. We have emphasised farmers' markets and they are sprouting up throughout the country.

We hope to appoint two specialists to support small food producers. We must stimulate them and we have said to the Leader companies that we see the focus falling on this area next time around because rural recreation and small food production interlock. If someone goes to a region to enjoy the rural recreation, he will want to eat the food of that region. We will see a concentration on that sort of indigenous development. Where things get beyond a certain level, however, they must go to Enterprise Ireland for support.

I have had other ideas. I was keen on developing sites for micro-industries. Hygiene regulations are now very strict and people can no longer set up small industries in their kitchens. The costs of buying a site, getting planning permission and securing services are very high. I had an idea that sites, not buildings, should be ready so that a person can erect a small building. There are other ideas in CLÁR areas we should look at.

Unfortunately, despite having worked hard for five years, I still have more ideas than there are hours in the day to implement. We will keep working for the next few weeks and see how much we can get done. A lot has been done and the sector is well set up. I hope the benefit will be seen in the time to come.

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