Kathryn Reilly (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Hogan, is present for this Adjournment matter.

The alignment proposals seek to achieve better working relationships between local authorities and local development companies, an objective that has been broadly welcomed by many local development groups. The main issue of contention, however, is one element of the plan under alignment, which is to transfer the funding from core programmes run by local development companies, LDCs, for example, Leader and the local and community development programmes, to socioeconomic committees set up under the control of local county councils.

Most people would say that over the last 21 years community bottom-up delivery of the local development programmes has served local and rural communities very well. There is a real concern among community groups, especially those that deliver the programmes, that moving control of programme funding away from communities will do serious damage to the concept of community activism and volunteerism. The local development model is managed by voluntary boards with strong community input. It is committed to maintaining the bottom-up approach and to participatory development with a clear focus on addressing the identified needs and allocating resources to the most disadvantaged within communities. It is flexible at local level to tailor local actions in line with local needs and priorities. It has a capacity to leverage additional funding for agreed priorities and, most importantly, for every €1 of core funding LDCs leverage an additional €1.59 in funding into local communities.

Since the establishment of these groups in 1991, Ireland has developed the most effective and highly-regarded local development structures in Europe, with the strongest administrative capacity. Ireland is the envy of Europe and is highly commended for delivery. A study of the EU local development programmes undertaken by the Directorate General for Regional and Urban Policy concluded that, in practice, local authorities rarely have exactly the same objective as local development groups and their leadership may hamper the commitment of other stakeholders, the quality of the innovative process and the success of the local strategy. Indeed, the European economic and social committee said that this is a structure which effectively complements local authority remits and, at the same time, it is clear that Leader cannot be used as a means of making up for insufficient municipal revenues and financing public services at local level in the EU member states.

With such high praise and support for this model the proposal to transfer the funding for the core programmes could damage, as many of the LDCs believe, the bottom-up approach to local development and call into question the ongoing commitment of strong community and voluntary sector involvement on the boards of local development companies. Has there been a cost-benefit analysis of whether it is more efficient to deliver local services and schemes through local development companies than to do so through local authorities? I understand the Minister has set up an alignment working group involving key stakeholders which is charged with developing the terms of reference for the socioeconomic committees, SECs, over the coming months. Is it correct that the Minister has identified ten front-runner pilot locations for SECs? Finally, can the Minister confirm that no pilot SEC will be established until the terms of reference for the SECs have been agreed by the alignment working group?