John Perry (Sligo-North Leitrim, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

That will be monitored across the board. When one considers the level of enterprise across the counties, one will see that this will in no way diminish the role of councillors. The Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Hogan, has introduced transformational change and given autonomy to local councillors for the first time ever. Councillors will be represented on the SPCs and the LEOs will undoubtedly make a contribution to the process in this regard. There is no need to duplicate arrangements or to create LEO consultative committees that would include councillors among their membership. If there were different councillors on both entities, there could be conflicting opinions with regard to what LEOs should or should not be doing.

What we are doing here relates to creating jobs. Local government plays a critical role in the job creation economy of every county. Councillors can agree to provide derogations in respect of vacant units or to encourage enterprise in towns and villages. What is envisaged is about giving power back to the people in the area of job creation. At present, enterprise boards are completely autonomous but that will not be the case with LEOs. The service level agreements relating to them will be operated by the regional director of Enterprise Ireland. When one considers the jobs plan that was announced earlier, one can see that huge emphasis that is being placed on start-up companies. One of the major engines of growth in this country at present is composed of the 200,000 new start-up companies operating here. Companies which commenced business in the past five years were responsible for 50% of the employment created during that period.

Deputy Tóibín stated that what is being done in this instance does not take account of the role of enterprise. Great consideration was given to this matter across local government and the enterprise sector. From now on, county managers will be chief executives and there will be a great deal of consultation with elected members. We want business people to be included on the evaluation committees. It would be easy for LEOs, which will have relatively small staffing complements, to be distracted and become involved with wider economic policy making and reporting. The latter will be dealt with by the SPCs. There would be no point in having the two entities doing the same job.

We are talking here about committees which will place an emphasis on business. Chambers Ireland and others can become involved, as can the community-owned economic development companies that are operating in, for example, Mayo and Sligo. Several of the latter companies will have a role to play in the context of the SPCs.

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