Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

The Deputy has his view and I have mine. I meet community groups, service providers and ordinary citizens. The response to a large number of the initiatives taken by the Department has been extremely positive. Those to whom I refer are of the view that having a range of activities under one Department is beneficial.

If one considers the urban areas, the drug diversion programme, the RAPID programme — these are closely interlinked — the partnerships and the CDPs all come under one Department. We are, therefore, taking a much more co-ordinated approach than was the case heretofore. In the past, matters such as those to which I refer were dealt with by four or five different Departments. This led to great difficulties in the context of co-ordinating policies.

In rural areas, the bodies under my Department will deliver the LDSIP, the Leader programmes and the rural social scheme. This will mean that it will be possible for such bodies to deal with social inclusion issues by using the rural social scheme and Leader funding. Previously, there would have been two different bodies operating in this area and we would have established a third to run the rural social scheme. There has been a great improvement in terms of the co-ordinated approach to development and, regardless of the Deputy's opinion, this has been generally welcomed by people throughout the country.

As regards the Gaeltacht and the islands, which were previously the responsibility of another Department, progress in this area has been widely welcomed because their needs can be considered and then serviced by the various instruments to which I refer. We are no longer obliged to work with extremely limited resources.

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