Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Seanadóir as ucht na ceiste a ardú. I heard a report that a debate took place in the Seanad yesterday on this matter which, to put it mildly, was ill-informed.

The cohesion process is a policy initiative approved by the Government in January 2004 which aims to bring greater coherence to the arrangements under which community and local development initiatives are delivered. The core objective of the process is the alignment of local, community and rural development organisations to achieve full area coverage of the local and community development programmes operated by the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, including rural development programmes, from 2007 onwards. In other words, one office will represent Leader, partnership companies and rural social schemes in any given area rather than having separate offices maintained by the different services, which is currently the case. The new arrangement makes a lot of sense.

In rural areas, such as counties Leitrim and Roscommon, this will involve rural and local development groups coming together to secure a unified overarching structure which provides full area coverage. My intention is that in any given area there will be one company providing local development services so that people wishing to access these supports will in future no longer have to deal with several different agencies. Requests have been made repeatedly for a one-stop shop, which is what we are providing. My preference is for unified overarching structures based around county boundaries where practicable, but I am prepared to consider proposals which involve variations across county boundaries on their merits.

Local development programmes operated by my Department in counties Leitrim and Roscommon are primarily delivered by two Leader companies and two partnerships. Despite considerable efforts by all concerned, it has not been possible to achieve a consensus to date on the future structures to cover both counties.

On 31 January, the Department convened a meeting of the four agencies in an attempt to make progress. Prior to the meeting, we issued a series of ground rules and asked the parties to comment on them. In view of the sensitive nature for parties of reporting to their boards, one of the ground rules was that no party would go to the media before the boards had reached agreement. My understanding is that all the parties agreed to the ground rules because they considered them to be in their common interest.

It is often said when partnership negotiations take place that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. The negotiating parties consult their boards about packages before going public. In this instance, the ground rules were agreed in advance so there was no question of gagging orders being imposed by my Department. We have been working towards a consensus for more than a year and, rather than using the hatchet, have patiently tried to persuade everybody to agree to a formula.

With regard to the Senator's vital question of whether we have reached a solution, we are getting there. Good will has been demonstrated and negotiations are ongoing. The Senator will understand that it would not be appropriate for me to go into further detail on the issues under consideration but I am hopeful we will find a solution within the next fortnight, with the good will of the parties involved, so that we can progress to new and bigger rural development and local development social inclusion programmes which can be delivered in a coherent manner.