Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Ceann Comhairle's office for allowing me this time. The pair of recently published reports on local government reform and alignment are only policy documents. While they appear to be Government policy, they are not yet legislation. Given the fact that local government reform is urgently required, it is strange and even farcical that the two distinct processes of reform and alignment are proposed to be implemented in the same timeframe. Surely local government reform is necessary before local government can even begin to take on a different role.

Both reports acknowledge that city and county councils may find themselves short of the skills required to assume an enhanced role in the co-ordination and oversight of local and community development programmes. This is the third attempt by civil servants to move the development and delivery of local services and programmes away from the community and voluntary sector. There were county strategy groups in the 1990s, county development boards, CDBs, in the 2000s and a new quango, socio-economic committees, SECs, is proposed for the 2010s.

Disjointed thinking is manifest in the reports. While the report on alignment recognises that the CDB is not the appropriate vehicle for the alignment of local government and local development in line with the report's recommendations, no clarification is given as to why the CDBs did not work and, therefore, while the SECs should or could work. Maybe we should not be surprised with the approach's inconsistencies, as no local development people or, most importantly, volunteer members of the boards were on the steering committee that completed the report. I wonder whether any of the committee's members volunteer in their communities.

In terms of the local community and rural development sector, the alignment addresses a number of issues, first of which is effectiveness and efficiency. EU reports consider the Irish model to be the best in Europe. The second issue is democracy and insufficient local authority engagement or oversight. The report implies that there is no future role for community involvement in local democracy, yet local authority officials and councillors are on the boards. The local development sector values its interaction with local, national and international politicians in supporting local communities or families with business ideas, employment issues, community issues, etc.

The third issue is accountability. Local development companies are answerable locally to their boards of directors and nationally to the Departments and the EU. The Leader programme has seven layers of inspections. The fourth point relates to bureaucracy. Although it is not locally imposed or EU-advised, the Department's interpretation of EU rules is restrictive. The proposals have a number of good aspects, for example, countywide planning, which should help all communities and agencies, and the recommendation on improved interdepartmental work. Some Departments, such as the Department of Social Protection, have not been kept fully informed of developments or made an input into the documents even though they are significant stakeholders in the local development companies.

The reports imply that the new local enterprise offices, LEOs, will be responsible for all enterprise funding. Currently, local development companies deliver a significant range of enterprise supports, including Leader, mentoring and grants. The local and community development programme, LCDP, supports area enterprises, allowances, Skillnets, etc. Per the 2011 LCDP progress report, more than 5,000 business start-ups were supported by local development companies last year. Therefore, alignment would not assist enterprise. Rather, it would hinder it, as local development companies have a reputation for and experience of working with people from the ground up, particularly in rural areas.

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