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

I move amendment No. 1:

To delete all words after "Dáil Éireann" and substitute the following:" - welcomes the overarching vision of Putting People First - Action Programme for Effective Local Government of a local government system leading economic, social and community development, delivering efficient and good value services, and representing citizens and local communities effectively and accountably;

- notes that following the publication in Putting People First of recommendations for enhanced alignment between local government and local development an alignment working group, including representatives of the Irish Local Development Network, was established to assist and advise on implementation;

- welcomes the structure of the local community development committees being established under the reform programme, which will facilitate full and comprehensive representation of all actors, including community interests, and whose membership will be decided in a fully transparent, representative and democratic way;

- recognises the important role of local development companies as part of these reformed arrangements, including continued implementation roles in programmes and the provision of supports across a range of areas;

- welcomes the Government’s decision to allocate 7% of the rural development programme, RDP, to the Leader element, 2% over the minimum required by the relevant EU regulation, resulting in an overall programme complement of €235 million for the 2014-2020 period; this, coupled with delivery of two Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine artisan food schemes using the Leader approach, results in a full Leader complement for the 2014-2020 period of some €250 million;

- notes that any entity that expresses an interest in delivering a RDP local development strategy using the Leader approach must meet the requirements of the EU regulatory framework, including that the entity should be a partnership of public and private local socioeconomic interests where no single interest group represents more than 49% of the voting rights at decision making level;

- recognises that local and community development programmes continue to play an important part in national social and economic recovery, including in the provision of valuable social services, direct and indirect supports for enterprise development, and employment creation; and

- reaffirms the continued partnership between community representatives, local authorities, local development bodies and statutory partners in ensuring effective co-ordination and targeting of services and avoidance of overlap and duplication, placing services before structures.”

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this evening's debate and to set the record straight on a number of issues relating to the ongoing process of reforming how we deliver on our local and community development agenda. This Government has set out clearly its aim to position local government as the primary vehicle of governance and public service at local level. That role involves local government in leading economic, social and community development; delivering efficient and good value services; and representing citizens and local communities effectively and accountably. These were the cornerstones of our policy document, Putting People First - Action Programme for Effective Local Government, published in October 2012, and they have also been reflected in the Local Government Reform Act 2014 under which the recent elections to a radically streamlined system of local government have taken place.

Local economic and social development involves a complex set of factors, including public service inputs, employment, skills, investment, innovation, productivity and quality of life. Supporting local development involves fostering methods to engage local people in the process in order to promote sustainable development and participation. It is widely recognised, most notably in a recent OECD report examining the delivery of local development in Ireland, that the co-ordination and management of this type of integrated process at local level is a key function of local government.

Given the capacity and, in particular, the democratic mandate of local government and the enhanced role set out for it in Putting People First, it is entirely appropriate that local government would have a key role in local and community development into the future. It will ultimately ensure more efficient and effective delivery of local and community development supports and interventions at a local level, putting the needs of citizens first in the delivery of publicly funded programmes and services. It is this focus on citizen-centred outcomes rather than the protection of existing delivery structures that is my primary concern.

Far from eroding local democratic structures, as the Fianna Fáil motion suggests, the commencement last Sunday, 1 June, of the principal provisions of the Local Government Reform Act 2014 represents a major milestone on the path towards a reformed and improved local government system, which will represent its citizens and communities effectively and accountably, which provides the services that people need efficiently; and which works in a financially responsible way, achieving the best possible value for money. It restores key elements of local government removed by Fianna Fáil-led governments since 1977. Fianna Fáil, in effect, reduced local government to just local administration.

The structural and other changes in place since last weekend constitute the most far-reaching changes in the local government sector since the current system was established in 1898. At county and city level, this has involved the dissolution of local authorities in Limerick, Tipperary and Waterford and their replacement by new merged authorities in each case. At sub-county level, we have introduced an innovative approach to local governance in the form of municipal districts which, unlike the isolated town councils they have replaced, embrace all parts of the county, uniting towns and their hinterlands and dispensing with outdated town boundaries. Overall, the number of local authority structures has reduced from 114 to 31 and the number of councillors from 1,627 to 949. A key outcome of this reorganisation will facilitate the refocusing of resources to be used to improve front-line services and to enhance the quality of life in local communities for the future rather than maintaining duplicated structures.

It is important to emphasise that the reform programme is not just about structural reorganisation. A range of other new policy initiatives also came into operation on 1 June, including provision for an enhanced role for elected members regarding economic development and enterprise support; new regional spatial and economic strategies; stronger oversight of local authority performance; the dissolution of city and county development boards; and the establishment of local community development committees. A further central element of the reform programme is the positioning of local authorities to take a much more central role in local and community development, particularly to ensure the most efficient and effective outcomes for citizens and communities.

Before I advance any further on this issue, it might be useful in order to provide a context for the current reforms if I remind members briefly of the background to local development structures and programmes and how they have developed in the recent past. In 2002, the then Fianna Fáil-led Government established the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs against a background of concern at the multiplicity of structures and agencies through which local and community development schemes and programmes were delivered. There was an inherent danger of fragmentation of services and diffusion of resources, with the new Department inheriting a number of local and community programmes with diverse structures which had been operated under the aegis of several different Departments. The cohesion process initiated a number of years ago by Deputy Ó Cuív to address these issues resulted in a significant reduction of local delivery structures for a range of rural and local development programmes. The close to 100 partnerships and Leader companies operating until 2009 were reduced to a total of 53 entities providing full nationwide coverage, a figure that has since been reduced further to 50. This rationalisation was then to be built on in a subsequent phase of cohesion concerned with improving and joining up the outputs of programmes.

In particular, the then Government saw a clear need to redesign its community development and social inclusion programmes, particularly the local development social inclusion programme, LDSIP, and the community development programme, CDP, drawing on good international practice and providing for ongoing evaluation of the programmes. A comprehensive programme of redesign was implemented which streamlined the delivery of the LDSIP and CDP with the introduction of the local and community development programme, LCDP, in 2010. The reduction in overheads achieved would support the effort to maximise the impact of available funding at the front line. There was opposition, as there always will be, among some groups to the model for integrated service delivery and structures at local level, maintaining the status quowas never an option given the issues relating to the delivery of the previous programmes, the concerns of the Committee of Public Accounts about the multitude of structures in the system, the criticisms in the McCarthy report and the prevailing budgetary reality at the time.

In May 2011, following the formation of this Government, responsibility for community functions and the LCDP transferred to my Department. The LCDP is my Department's main community development scheme, covering all areas of the country and representing the largest social inclusion intervention of its kind in the State. Total funding of €281 million has been allocated to the LCDP since it was introduced in 2010 and all 50 local development companies are contracted to deliver the LCDP to the end of 2014. The current programme officially ended at the end of 2013, having operated for four years, but it is being implemented on a transitional basis for 2014 with a budget of €47 million, pending the roll out of a new social inclusion programme in January 2015.

Over the past three years, my focus has centred on building on the reform process that the previous Fianna Fáil-led Government had started. I am therefore more than a little mystified as to where Fianna Fáil is coming from with the motion it has tabled. As part of the programme of reform of local government, local community development committees, LCDCs are being established in each local authority area. These committees, comprising public private socioeconomic interests, will have responsibility for local and community development programmes on an area basis, including my Department's Leader and local and community development programmes.

They will develop, co-ordinate and implement a more coherent and integrated approach to local and community development than heretofore, with the aim of reducing duplication and overlap and optimising the use of available resources for the benefit of citizens and communities. I am trying to finish what Deputy Ó Cuív started.

In the specific context of local development, the primary objective of the alignment process, outlined in Putting People First, is to improve co-ordination of publicly funded programmes at local level, to reduce overlap and duplication and to better target resources at a time of significant social need. Looking back over time, several studies and initiatives under successive Governments have sought to identify or implement improved co-ordination of local development funding, including reports such as Better Local Government: A Programme for Change, 1996; the report of the task force on integration of local government and local development systems, 1998; and the Indecon review of the county and city development board strategic reviews and proposals for strengthening and developing those boards, 2008. In general, these initiatives did not achieve their objectives so, in many respects, it was unsurprising that the most recent report by the alignment steering group highlighted that challenges remain in terms of the multiplicity of agencies and committees that are supported locally, with the consequential risks around duplication, overlap, lack of joined-up planning and the need for better targeting of resources of publicly funded programmes.

The Government policy on alignment recognises that the capacity of all those involved must be mobilised for more effective delivery of services, the local authorities, local development bodies, other statutory partners, and the community sector. It is with this in mind that as part of the process I am introducing the new public participation networks, PPNs, which will greatly enhance the voice of the community and voluntary sector, in particular through their role in local community development committees, LCDCs. For the first time community is being recognised on a statutory basis. The PPNs will nominate people to LCDCs, and will include not just a community voice but also representatives of social inclusion and environmental interests. This is all part of the overall push for greater citizen engagement in the context of the local government reform programme.

For the sake of clarity, the House should be aware that there are approximately 700 people directly employed in local development companies to support the delivery of the Leader and local community development programmes, LCDPs, on behalf of the Department. The companies also deliver a range of other programmes and interventions under contract to other Departments and agencies, and this may explain some of the misinformation that Deputy Browne had when he spoke about the various rural social schemes and Tús programmes that will be effectively obliterated. These are managed by the companies on behalf of the Department of Social Protection, so perhaps he will address those issues to that Department. My Department's contractual relationship is with the individual companies which are in turn responsible for their own staffing and employment issues. Therefore, my focus has to be on ensuring the structures and contractual arrangements between my Department at the centre and the local delivery mechanisms are designed in a manner that ensures the most efficient and effective outcomes from the Leader programmes and LCDPs which are delivered on my Department's behalf. I would be failing in my duty if I did otherwise.

I fully recognise the strengths and capacities of the local development companies, which is very well articulated in the Government's policy document, Putting People First. As for all organisations involved in delivering services to the public, the prime focus of local development companies must be, first and foremost, on serving the public, rather than on retaining sole control of public programmes. We need to ensure value for money and, therefore, in accordance with the public spending code, best practice internationally, legal advice and ensuring the optimum delivery of services to clients, the LCDP successor programme will be subject to a public procurement process. I do not have any option. I must observe the law.

With regard to the delivery of the development programmes managed by my Department, as an integral part of the alignment of community development and local government, oversight of the LCDP will transfer to the local community development committees, LCDCs, within each local authority from 1 July next. The new social inclusion and community activation programme, SICAP, is one of my Department's key priorities and its budget for its first year of operation will be addressed as part of the 2015 Estimates process. The SICAP public procurement process will be a competitive process that will be open to local development companies, other not-for-profit community groups and commercial firms that believe they can provide the services to be tendered for to deliver the new programme. The LCDCs will procure the programme locally. All proposals received will be assessed in accordance with the assessment criteria notified with the tender documentation, and the contract or contracts will be awarded on the basis of that assessment.

The aim of SICAP is to reduce poverty and promote social inclusion and equality through local, regional and national engagement and collaboration. It aims to build on more than 20 years of local and community development work funded by my Department and its predecessors. It strives to build on the country's internationally commended history of local and community development activity and also aims to take account of international experience in recognising the need for local approaches to complement and add value to mainstream service provision in our public employment and education services. My Department is aware of the work undertaken in recent years by the leadership in energy and environmental design, LEED, and other divisions within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in recognising the value of local approaches to promoting inclusive economic growth and in recognising the role for local government as a key player in that regard.

Eurofound, the OECD, the International Labour Organization, the National Economic and Social Council, and the Economic and Social Research Institute, have all commented on the fact that the key route out of social exclusion is to support individuals to be in employment. Programmes such as SICAP can be beneficial in helping those most distant from the labour market to be better prepared for access to the labour market by working with them to enhance their educational and training capacity. This programme will prioritise supports to those who are unemployed, including those not on the live register.

SICAP is being introduced at a time of significant structural and policy change in the Department with regard to local government reform and the roll-out of the new LCDCs and the governance model for local and community development in each local authority area. SICAP is a substantial player in the change process as a key programme for which the new LCDCs will have management and oversight.

Leader, the community-led local development approach, has been a tool for the delivery of rural development interventions in Ireland since its inception in 1991, and will remain at the heart of the delivery of rural development interventions for the 2014 to 2020 programming period. The Government acknowledges the positive impact the use of the Leader approach has had on the development of rural areas in Ireland in the 2007 to 2013 period and recognises the part the local development companies have played in this. In the context of a more cohesive approach to the delivery of all local development interventions, it is important that Leader funding is part of a more strategic approach to supporting development in rural areas, and for that reason the Government is proposing some changes to the future delivery of the Leader elements of the rural development programme. The changes are proposed to achieve two main objectives, to promote a more cohesive approach to local development as outlined in Putting People First, which I have just outlined, and to address issues and challenges faced through delivery of the current 2007-2013 programme.

The added value of the local development companies' role in the delivery of Leader lies in their well-developed ability to empower their communities and support them to build their capacity to access funding through Leader. This role is, and will remain, critical to the delivery of Leader funding and ensures the quality of the interventions funded under the programme and the ability of these interventions to address local needs. For the avoidance of any confusion, I acknowledge that the current local development companies have well-developed skills and experience in this area in particular and I see them continuing this role in their capacity as partners on the LCDCs. I have indicated this to the local development companies on many occasions. I have met the representatives of the Irish Local Development Network and of the County and City Managers Association many times and have repeated these points to them over the past 18 months.

It is incumbent upon us in government not just to ensure the funding delivered through Leader supports high quality interventions that address needs locally but also that it complies with the processes of sound financial management and audit compliance. The Deputies opposite are well aware of issues around good corporate governance, financial management or lack of it in many of the companies, but I heard no mention of those issues in this debate. I suppose in some respects I am not surprised by that but there are issues that cannot go unnoticed when one is trying to reform the programmes we have now. We must take those issues into account when developing the new structures and models of financial management and proper compliance with the programmes because we are subject to audit, not just at national level but also at EU level.

The broader role currently undertaken by the local development companies involves the management of the administrative and payment processes that are also an integral part of the Leader funding process. It is in this context that my Department has experienced some difficulty in the current programming period. It is part of the job of my Department to mitigate risks to funding as far as possible, and I make no apology for this. We are dealing with European and Irish taxpayers' money and we must ensure the systems for the management of that money are robust. I propose to do this by amending the systems to address the challenges identified and experienced in the 2007 to 2013 programming period. I believe this is a sensible approach which will ultimately ensure a more efficient delivery of the funds in the 2014 to 2020 period. Primarily, this will involve ensuring the systems we use to deliver the Leader elements of the 2014-2020 programme are fit for purpose and that any entity contracted to deliver the Leader elements of the RDP has the financial and management capacity to do so.

In this context and in the interest of clarity, Ireland proposes to support the implementation of rural development interventions through the Leader elements of the RDP 2014-2020 at local level using a public private partnership approach.

This will form part of a more integrated and coherent approach to local development that involves community and local government organisations in leadership roles, guiding a more integrated and co-ordinated approach to the delivery of all funding, both European and national, at a local level.

The priorities at local level will be developed using a partnership approach that will draw on the skills and expertise of local public and private socioeconomic interests, including local development expertise, local authorities and community and voluntary organisations, in consultation with the wider population. These strategic priorities will then form the basis for programme-specific priorities in each area. This approach would see local authorities working in partnership with local development agencies and community representatives to design and implement local development strategies at local level, based on the strategic priorities already identified. Both strategic priorities and programme-specific priorities would form part of an overall planning process at a local level and this would be integrated with planning processes at regional, national and European levels, thereby addressing the need for a more integrated approach to support for rural development.

Such an arrangement also envisages the identification of a lead financial partner as part of the partnership arrangement. The lead financial partner must have the capacity to provide the financial support necessary to ensure successful financial delivery of Leader-type interventions for the duration of the programming period. This will address the significant challenges relating to the financial solvency and capacity of legal entities which were experienced in the programme period. The system also proposes to delegate the administrative checks required to verify expenditure to an independent entity with the capacity to ensure these checks are carried out to a consistently high standard at all times. The composition of the proposed public private partnership will be in line with the requirements of the EU regulatory framework and fulfil all the criteria necessary to be considered a local action group in both composition and ethos.

I am proposing to conduct a two stage local development strategy selection process providing the opportunity to develop this partnership approach incrementally and with full and comprehensive consultation to maintain the integrity of the community-led local development approach. The aims of these processes are to facilitate the development of robust, implementable strategies that address the needs of individual local areas and are complementary to other development processes at local, regional, national and European level. I am confident that the systems to be put in place will facilitate the effective inclusion of support provided though the Leader elements of the rural development programme in the broader local development context, while ensuring the efficient management of expenditure as required by the regulatory framework.

There has been comment on the need to engage with the local development sector. Let me put the record straight. Shortly after the Government published Putting People First, which included recommendations from the expert group on alignment, I invited the Irish Local Development Network to participate on the alignment implementation group which was being established to assist and advise on the implementation of the proposals approved by Government. The implementation group was to have two ILDN representatives, two local government representatives and representative from my Department and Pobal. In fairness to the ILDN, it wanted time to consider its participation, and the implementation group met without its participation initially. The ILDN then come back to my Department and indicated that it would participate if the name of the group could be changed from "implementation group" to "working group", if its terms of reference could be changed and if they could have an extra nominee. My Department acceded to all these requests. Since then, the group has met 11 times and, additionally, I have met them directly on three occasions, while my Department has had several further bilateral meetings with the ILDN representatives. The notion that there is not consultation or that there is no engagement is absolutely a false one. Any suggestion that I or my Department have not engaged in consultation simply does not stand up to scrutiny. There has been far too much inaccurate commentary on this and other aspects of the alignment process, not least during the recent local elections campaign. Despite all of that, it is important that there is clarity around the fact that the process is marching on, not least through the establishment of the new local and community development committees under the Local Government Reform Act and the development of the new SICAP and Leader programmes.

I wish to reiterate what I have said earlier in this debate and many times previously, namely, that the Government recognises and acknowledges the contribution of local development companies in the delivery of local development interventions at a local level. Equally, I want to make it clear that they form only part of a complex landscape that requires a more streamlined approach in order to increase efficiencies and ensure that all funding available at a local level has the maximum impact. The role of local government is widely recognised as key to the delivery of local and community interventions, and the aim of the local government reform and alignment processes is to strengthen this role for the benefit of communities all over Ireland.

I have assured the local development companies on a number of occasions that they will maintain a role in the new architecture that will support a more integrated approach to the delivery of development funding at local level. I envisage that this role will play to their particular strengths and I am absolutely convinced that the new systems will allow them to focus more on supporting the delivery of high quality development interventions at local and community level. It is with this in mind that I again request that local development companies continue to engage with the reform process, and I am glad they will meet my Department this week, as I firmly believe that the outcome of this will support us all to facilitate the sustainable, integrated development of communities across the country, an aim towards which I believe we should all be working.

I thank Deputy Ó Cuív for his constructive approach and also Deputy Calleary in regard to the matters they raised, and I will certainly consider some of the issues raised by them, of which I have taken note. Perhaps we can have a further engagement on these matters in the future. I assure Deputy Browne that all moneys under these programmes will be ring-fenced for what they are intended and not for filling potholes in Wexford, and I am sure his son, whom I congratulate on his recent election to Wexford local authority, will ensure that.

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