Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

I do not know the totality of the papers that were made available, or what was their status. I will find out what can and cannot be made available. There might be some FOI issues, but I am not sure. I will look into it.

I do not know how many jobs were created. I do not know if anybody knows. It is very hard to get cause and effect. I worked for many years in job creation. It is not just about creating jobs, but about creating sustainable jobs. It is about something growing to a stage that it no longer needs further State support, but keeps growing and growing. The measure of job creation is the number of jobs created by the number of years they are sustained and the number of jobs they, in turn, self-sustain. I do not know if anybody has that data. We can collect endless figures and make endless cases. However, we must make sure that the collection of the data does not become more important than doing the work. I have no doubt as to the efficacy of the schemes we run. We have debated these time and again during the Estimates process. If one believes that there are schemes such as CLÁR, RAPID, the Gaeltacht schemes and so on that should be wiped out, then I am all ears.

This was meant to be an independent report. The idea that we can have an independent report which only states what the Department thinks is a kind of a nonsense. Of course, given that it is an independent report, we do not have to accept the findings. I was a little bit surprised, shocked and horrified when my colleague mentioned that not all the proposals in the report would be implemented. Everybody in this House would disagree with aspects of the report, and say that the experience of the people writing it would not be the experience of the Deputies on the ground of the efficiencies of various schemes. I think the scheme I inherited has grown and is run efficiently. I do not accept the criticism of the community services programme that the outputs are uncertain. I guarantee that if we were to stop the community services programme, there is not a Deputy in this House that would not be in here with multiple delegations, explaining to me the importance of the schemes of that programme in his or her local community. Every Deputy would be in here and they would tell me that it is a tragedy that anybody was even considering cutting back on that scheme.

Mr. McCarthy obviously had a different view, and he is entitled to that. It is an interesting report and there are some very thought provoking proposals in it. My officials are looking at every one of his proposals, and writing our critique of his critique. That will work its way through the system and the Government will make decisions on where we go from there.

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