Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 2:

In page 5, between lines 9 and 10, to insert the following:

“7. Each local enterprise office shall establish a consultative committee which shall provide advice on local economic development to relevant interested parties, such committee shall operate on a voluntary basis, the membership of which shall include—(a) members of the relevant local authority, and

(b) representatives of local business.”.

The Minister of State will not be surprised that I have tabled this amendment. It was ruled out of order on Committee Stage but we rephrased it in order that there would be no charge on the State. The basis and success of the county enterprise boards has been the formal local involvement of elected members and business people, who have brought their practical experience to the running of the operation. While the notion of a LEO is welcome and the way they are being established, especially in my county, is rather innovative and exciting, the fact is that we are proceeding to ignore formally the input of local elected representatives and the local business community in terms of the day-to-day management and operation of the LEOs.

Let us consider the service level agreement. Section 2.5 states:

The County / City Council is a Local Authority (LA) in accordance with the provisions of the Local Government Act 2001. Each Council has a remit to provide a wide range of services in its functional area...LEOs will be established in LA offices to deliver the services as referenced...The decision to establish LEOs acknowledges the support that LAs are providing to businesses, and seeks to facilitate the sharing of best practice and active benchmarking of these types of support across the Local Authority system.

That is fine although there may be considerable doubt in the business community about the support provided from local authorities to business, but we will allow that to change.

Now, let us consider the operational arrangements under the service level agreement. Section 4.1.3 states:

The incoming CEO shall be the Head of the LEO and there will be a direct reporting relationship between the Head of the LEO and the County or City Manager. The management relationship for Heads of LEOs appointed subsequent to the establishment of the LEOs will be subject to any future local arrangements the County or City Manager may wish to provide.

That is fine where there is a good and innovative county manager committed to the LEO ethos and the agenda of local enterprise. However, if we do not have that, then where is the control? Where are the controls to ensure the enterprise ethos is within the LEOs?

Section 7.1 of the agreement relates to information sharing and states: "To facilitate active engagement between LEO staff, with the EI Centre of Excellence, and the City and County Managers Association (CCMA), a system of regular formal liaison meetings between the LEOs, EI and the CCMA, including at least one annual meeting, will be established." There is no mention of elected representatives or local business organisations.

Then, section 7.2 refers to serving the political system. It makes reference to parliamentary questions, ministerial representation, Adjournment Debates, Topical Issue Matters, Oireachtas committee appearances and ministerial speeches. This is followed by the only mention of local authority members: "In accordance with normal requirements, the activities of the LEOs will be reported on to the elected representatives of the Councils." They are so far down the food chain in the running of local enterprise offices that they only get a one-line mention in a detailed document of 34 pages.

The Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Hogan, goes around beating his chest about Putting People First, which is about as relevant a title to a document as I do not know what, because there is nothing about people in it. This service level agreement document carries that ethos through. The role of the elected representative is reduced to a one-line mention in the service level agreement. There are formal reporting relationships within the service level agreement for the County and City Managers Association and Enterprise Ireland. Furthermore, the local business input from the local chambers of commerce and local Small Firms Association branches is gone from the LEOs as well. They have gone into some sort of fluffy local community development thing.

This amendment seeks to ensure that there is some sort of formal recognition for elected members of county councils. In his time as a local representative, the Minister of State was a member of Sligo County Enterprise Board. He brought day-to-day experience to the running of that board, including the awarding of grants, a function which will now be withdrawn from elected members of county councils. If he had not been able to do that and was an ordinary council member subject to the reporting requirements - so the county manager would have given him a nod towards the CEB whenever it suited him - his input would have been drastically reduced.

This amendment therefore proposes a method of having day-to-day input from elected representatives and local business people.

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