Brian Ó Domhnaill (Fianna Fail)

Baineann an rún seo leis na scéimeanna Leader a chuirtear ar fáil sna Gaeltachtaí, go háirithe i mo Ghaeltacht, Gaeltacht Dhún na nGall. I will continue in English for the benefit of the Minister of State, who has good Irish but who may on this occasion want the point made clear in English.

The Leader fund is vital to this country and will be available until 2013. Meitheal Forbartha na Gaeltachta wound up as a company in August or September of last year. As a result, many projects in Gaeltacht areas in respect of which funding was approved were unable to draw it down. I know of a number of projects in my constituency in respect of which community organisations have taken out overdrafts with banks and financial institutions on the strength of their grant approval. To date, the grants have not been drawn down due to the very slow re-establishment of the Leader funding programme for Gaeltacht areas. Gaeltacht areas have lost out on millions of euro as a result of there being no administrative structure in place to channel the grants and allow employers and community organisations to apply for them.

In Donegal, expressions of interest in administering the scheme were sought by Pobal in March, and a number were received. Progress on the part of the Department has been slow, given that six or eight months had expired without the scheme being rolled out and allowing a new organisation to take over the administrative functions of the scheme so groups could apply for grants and so the money owed to groups that were approved before the winding up of Meitheal Forbartha na Gaeltachta could be paid out. This is long overdue.

I hope the Minister of State will be able to reassure all the groups from Gaeltacht areas that were owed money by Meitheal Forbartha na Gaeltachta before it wound up or are owed money by Pobal or the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government. It is time that those groups received clarity and that a new scheme were put in place in County Donegal, be it under the remit of the Donegal Local Development Company or any other organisation. The scheme ought to be up and running and applicants should be afforded the opportunity to apply for grant aid under it before it runs out at the end of 2013. We are talking about European money co-funded by the Irish Exchequer. We have lost out on the funding in Gaeltacht areas. When the scheme is re-established in Gaeltacht areas, I ask that there be front-loading of funding therefor. An extensive advertising campaign should be undertaken so groups will know they can apply and that additional funding will be made available given that the Gaeltacht has had no funding whatsoever over the past 11 months.