Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We should have a European model which supports local development. It should not be lost for the sake of some tendering rules which are utterly unfair and disregard the success of that model in the first place.

The Minister has made an argument concerning administration costs. There have been leaks to newspapers about the salaries of various CEOs, but moving them into county councils will not save a huge amount. If, as the Minister says, the local companies will be protected, then nothing will be saved. The majority of those companies operate very tight ships considering the effort and hours that staff put in, as well as the projects they take on. There will be job losses because this tendering model will not guarantee jobs. The Minister is trying to protect the skills we have but that tendering model will not protect existing staff who have skills that cannot be bought in the market place or replicated.

Protection must be given to existing companies both to deliver Leader and the LCD programme. They have both the required expertise and ability. In the previous cohesion round, we saw there were good people for tenders but when it came to delivery it did not happen. We saw the difficulties it caused for companies such as MFG, so we do not want that to recur. We cannot allow that loss of time and delivery space in communities.

The Leader programme was a beacon that sustained rural economies through dark times. We need it again now to sustain rural communities. We need the LCDP to give communities a chance and to help those who are left behind so they can catch up. In addition, we need the training opportunities it presents to communities and particularly to participants. The very schemes rolled out by Deputy Ó Cuív when he was a Minister, such as Tús and RSS, are now used as models in other programmes. They owe their successful ethos to the health of the local development sector, which is now under threat.

One of the lessons of the recent local elections is that rural economies are falling apart. The heart is being taken out of them by the move towards bigger urban centres. We can use the current network of local development companies to shout "Stop", as the late John Healy said. They can be an effective model to do that if we give them responsibility for rural services, such as a one-stop-shop for services, including local transport, rural enterprise and agricultural supports. In such circumstances, one could invest in those companies for the future of rural Ireland, or one can decide to adopt a tendering model which can be done anywhere by any entity with no connection to rural Ireland.

The staff and board members of local development companies have done this State very significant service. The Minister should allow them to continue doing so. In the coming weeks, he should engage with them to see if there is a shared way of moving forward. Everybody shares their aims, so this is the Minister's opportunity to deliver on them.

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