Séamus Pattison (Carlow-Kilkenny, Labour)
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The House will resume on Question No. 41.

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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It is obvious that certain areas, by virtue of being the most disadvantaged, would have been expected to be the slowest to take advantage of the RAPID programme. A fundamental part of the programme is community motivation. I am not the AIT. The AIT consists of a number of statutory agencies, local authorities and so on, but it also consists of community representatives. One of the obvious problems is that the most disadvantaged communities will have the weakest community structures — that is why they are most disadvantaged.

In the past we thought we would solve the problems overnight. We accept that there are problems in these areas. As this has now been confirmed by an independent report, we will consider ways of giving a particular lift to these areas. That is the only rational way to proceed.

I agree with the Deputy that problems have arisen, which have been highlighted, with regard to certain agencies not interacting fully with the scheme. To be fair to the Department of Education and Science, last February I asked its officials to attend the last meeting of the national monitoring committee, which took place on 1 June, to give an account of how they would be more proactive with regard to the RAPID process. The meeting was very beneficial. A series of similar issues have arisen. For example, we interacted for a long time with the Garda Síochána with regard to community policing and, eventually, we made progress. We try to identify the problem areas, select them and see how to develop them.

I am glad the Deputy raised the issue of prioritisation. When I was first presented with the RAPID programme, in the Department of Agriculture and Food, and was told to set up rural RAPID, I identified the issue raised by the Deputy — how to be sure something that happened in a target area under the NDP would not have happened anyway. I accept that is a problem. It is a challenge that has existed from the start. One of the reasons CLÁR is different from RAPID is that I said, "Thanks but no thanks".

I inherited RAPID in a form that was agreed between the social partners. We have moulded it, but to address the issue raised by the Deputy we have the leverage funds and the earmarked dormant accounts funding of €11.5 million which is specifically for the AITs for projects that were falling through the cracks. We have tried to make it a poly-method funding rather than just the prioritisation or re-prioritisation that was originally intended.