Jack Wall (Kildare South, Labour)

The one stop shop approach certainly works in respect of the sports partnerships in the specific areas where they set out workshops in respect of providing information and setting up programmes where they work with the various sports groups to ensure the application for national lottery funding is right and proper and within the guidelines.

I do not see anything of that in respect of either the outgoing Leader programmes or the new process. The programme for Government contains exciting things relating to creating a vibrant rural community in respect of agriculture and agri-tourism. However, I see nothing that invites the people in. There has been a complete change in respect of many agri-businesses in rural Ireland and nothing seems to be coming on stream that will attract them. We talk about Leader, changes and the realignment of the system but nothing seems to be coming forward that will suddenly tell rural areas that we are now going to have a vibrant community, involve everybody, have a tourism value that will attract people to our area, use some of the facilities that farmers have and see mechanisms that will make it easy for this to happen. That does not seem to be there. Does the Minister of State believe that this is or will be there? Where do we stand in respect of the vibrant rural community that was envisaged in the programme for Government before the last election?

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