Phil Hogan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising this important matter. The local government document that I recently published set out a range of reforms that would place local government at the heart of economic, social and community development. This includes facilitating enhanced alignment between local government and local and community development programmes and functions. Greater alignment is primarily about giving the citizen a better deal and providing better services for our communities in the most cost effective and efficient manner possible.

I established the steering group to study this issue. Its report acknowledged the key strengths of the local development sector, including the sector's closeness to the citizen and communities, its track record of leading social inclusion and local and community development initiatives, and the local knowledge and expertise built up by local development bodies in service planning and delivery.

The steering group also recognised that there were certain limitations to the local development model. For example, there can be a considerable administrative burden, there is a potential for duplication and overlap because of the complexity of the local development landscape, there are many different funding and reporting arrangements, and demands and hidden costs are associated with the requirement on various stakeholders to participate in multiple boards and structures at local level.

I am confident that the introduction of SECs in each local authority area, as proposed by the steering group and approved by the Government, will bring coherence to the range of local and community development interventions at local level. In the long term, these committees will assume oversight and planning responsibility for all local and community development actions. They will ensure a joined-up, cross-government, cross-sectoral approach locally with benefits for local and community development programming that the city and county enterprise boards, CEBs, have been unable to achieve.

With the phasing out of CEBs and a more central role for local government in local and community development, local authority staff will assume greater responsibility for the oversight and co-ordination of local and community development activity. These changes will free up local development bodies and their staff to concentrate on front-line service delivery. We need a greater focus in this regard and more sustainable programme administration costs to ensure that the local and community development structures that are in place are viable in the long run. The new arrangements that we are introducing will achieve this.

I have no intention of introducing arrangements that would be detrimental to Ireland's local development model. We have a strong record of delivering local and community development interventions and we want to consolidate that record on behalf of communities, not damage our standing in this regard.

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