Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate the Minister, Deputy Ring, and the Minister of State, Deputy Kyne, on their appointments. My experience since I came into the Dáil tells me they will be passionate and fair to people. While many of my comments might suggest I do not think that way, my heart is in rural Ireland and its community.

The new Department of community and rural affairs is a positive move. There is no doubt it is what I fought for as a community representative and as a person who worked my way up from the community to my local council and from my local council to Dáil Éireann. I always spoke about the desperate need for a stand-alone, senior Ministry for community and rural affairs. My problem is the budget and the role of the Minister. I am very worried that the budget will leave the Minister's hands tied. We need to know the Minister's brief exactly. There are huge issues of concern to rural Ireland. I will touch on a number of issues where changes might be made. Hopefully the Minister and Minister of State will have a say on these issues.

I hope the Minister will be the Minister to lead a change from the current position we are in with the Leader programme. The destruction the former Minister, Phil Hogan, caused to the Leader programme and to the community groups that were depending on Leader funding is quite unacceptable. We have been in the new programme since 2014 and the changes we were all concerned about are coming to fruition. There is little or no funding which causes devastation to rural communities. I know plenty of rural communities in west Cork that have lost heavily. We were unlucky enough to lose €2.4 million in our budget in west Cork, undeservedly so because we had projects far in excess of €2.4 million. It cost organisations like the Ballydehob community hall which had new projects ready to roll. Unfortunately, the projects all had to stop, leaving them with their plans in tatters. The West Cork Development Partnership and probably other partnerships spent years developing west Cork and every bit of blackguarding that could have been done was used to get rid of them.

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