John Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

That is the general concern of ordinary people. We all know about the huge waste of money in local authorities, but we are now going to hand over another block of enterprise to councils who will be the ring-masters. If the Minister goes ahead with this project - I certainly hope he does not - he should ensure that whatever moneys are allocated in future will be ring-fenced and that county managers will not be able to raid the kitty of whatever the Minister may decide to allocate.

I find it difficult to understand why the Minister is going down this road. He has visited many of the development companies around the country and has seen at first hand the tremendous work they do. In my county, Wexford, the boards have been doing great work in the past four or five years, and I am sure it is the same in every other county. Wexford Local Development, WLD, is a company limited by guarantee with a voluntary board of 24 directors, eight of whom are elected community and voluntary sector representatives. It is a not-for-profit company and the membership of the local community development committees will have far fewer community and voluntary sector representatives under the Minister's proposal. Much valuable expertise and many people who have been providing a free service will be lost under the Minister's proposal. It is a major mistake.

From January, the local and community development programme currently delivered by WLD will be procured by Wexford County Council through a public tendering process, raising the prospect of private commercial companies delivering the county's biggest social inclusion programme under the auspices of the local authority on a for-profit basis. Deputy Calleary referred to the tendering process. How will it work? There is a major concern that these companies will no longer be able to compete against private sector companies that are already providing such services. Companies in the EU - for example, in the UK and Germany - will be eligible to tender for these projects, and that is a major concern regarding the new board when it is established.

In my constituency, many good projects were funded by WLD. The Minister is also aware of this as he was briefed fully on WLD, visited some of the projects and recognised the important work it was doing in the county. WLD employs 81 people directly, with a further 450 people employed through various employment schemes such as Tús, community employment, CE, and the rural social scheme, RSS. What will happen to these people? I met 73 of them recently and they had no notion of where they will stand. There has been no dialogue or discussion. In a reply to a parliamentary question, the Minister told me the CEO was supposed to brief these people and tell them what was happening. However, the CEO and board are very much in the dark about what is going to happen.

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