Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

I thank Senator Moylan for raising this matter which touched upon a number of issues that we need to resolve. First, partnerships do not cover the whole territory. In rural areas in particular, disadvantage is not concentrated in spatial units. It tends to be dispersed across the board. Nobody could argue that south Offaly, to which Senator Moylan referred, is less disadvantaged than the rest of the county. One could argue that it is at least equally disadvantaged, if not more so.

The second issue is that we need to recognise that the funding was not exactly increasing in the past few years. There is no point in widening the area for which funding can be provided if one cannot finance it. However, we know many of the relevant groups have sought to expand their areas and I have great sympathy for this approach. There is much that they could do to help their own case.

This year, we asked the county development boards to bring together all the agencies in their counties to see how we could establish better synergies and thereby provide cover for areas that, until now, did not have the services of a partnership, for example. Offaly has the OAK partnership, Leader companies and the west Offaly local development social inclusion programme.

Ideally, I would like to see a county partnership or Leader company with its offices in the different regions of the county, but with only one centre of bureaucracy engaged in accounting and with all the focus on providing the services on the ground. That is a development that must come from the ground up. I will certainly not lay down the law to any group because I want to try to get groups to ascertain the best way to provide an integrated, comprehensive, one-stop shop service to all the people of the county.

If I included south Offaly, there would still be an area around Tullamore that would not be covered by a partnership. As sure as I am standing here, those concerned would say to me, quite legitimately, that there are disadvantaged people in the area. Therefore, I would rather develop, on a county-by-county basis, a comprehensive structure that would cover the whole of each county. We should examine the existing resources to create the efficient synergies so we can give more effect over a wider area right across County Offaly.

If many bodies are operating on the ground, people get confused, although we might believe we all know what they are doing. I agree with the Senator's sentiments but obviously I must make all my decisions with two considerations in mind, the first of which concerns money. This will always be a consideration. No matter how much money one has, one can always find more ways to spend it, as even the richest person can prove. The second consideration pertains to the creation of rational structures that are friendly to the people on the ground and which would cover the whole of County Offaly. It would be fair to say that there are probably no great differences in the mix of the people of any two rural areas in the county.

I thank the Senator for raising this issue which I will consider very seriously over the coming months, subject to finance being available and the willingness of the various players on the ground to co-operate in creating the synergies needed to bring about the radical change to which the Senator referred.