Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I wish the Minister well in the remaining weeks of his Ministry to deliver all those things. He has a super team of officials. Would those very excellent individuals not be absolutely delighted to have their Minister living in the town in which the Department is based? In bringing organisations together, one of the difficulties with LEADER at the moment is that we have brought it under the local community development committees, LCDCs, programme in the local authorities. We are losing a connection because of that. It is getting in the way of delivering the programme. I agree that we have to bring them together but we cannot lose what makes them work and what makes them tick in that process. This comes back to my initial point. The process of bringing them together through the LCDCs has not worked. I do not think it has resulted in better services. We need to be careful when bringing them together that we do not lose that spark.

The Department needs additional responsibilities but it also needs a budget to cover them.

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