Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

While I appreciate that, what I am saying is that the Minister needs to have an additional focus and emphasis on the Border counties. About two months ago, we had people in from the Irish Central Border Area Network, ICBAN, and the other agencies around the Border. They are really animated about this situation because they see community groups all around the Border that have worked on a cross-Border relationship very well and have made great progress, many of which are related to farming businesses and the agricultural sector. They see huge problems coming down the line. They are saying that the only thing that is going to mitigate against this is money. The Government needs to put money in place to try to ensure that these communities can survive. While I appreciate that there are a whole lot of schemes, what we need to see is an additional helping hand, an additional way of ensuring that these communities will get additional resources. Many of them do not have their own resources. I will give an example. There is a community centre right beside me and it missed out on the first round of funding in LEADER to get the roof done and other projects that the community needed. It got into the second round of funding but it only got a small portion of the money it needed. People are going round in a community of 600 people trying to raise the rest of the money. It is practically impossible. There needs to be recognition that in many small rural communities there is not that emphasis on trying to raise the money themselves because they do not have the resources.

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