Phil Hogan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Amendment No. 89 rounds out the extension of new functions to local authorities, as set out in the Government action programme for effective local government. This is an important element of the Bill and will ensure that balanced local economic and community development will be undertaken in accordance with the principles of sustainable development, and that this development will be led and co-ordinated by the local government system. This function will be central to the new functions of local authorities. It will add to the current function in promoting the interests of local authorities, and in that context I am proposing amendment No. 88.

The changes in regard to economic development, enterprise support, community development and local development are major departures in local government functions, reversing some of the marginalisation of local government over the past few decades. There is a link between what we are doing in this Bill and the larger national economic crisis. Through the hard work and sacrifice of the people of Ireland, we have now exited the bailout programme. The Government recently launched its medium-term economic strategy to point the way to a stable and prosperous future, and away from the failed policies of boom and bust that have cost us so dearly. The local economic and community sector has an important contribution to make to the national economic recovery plan and to the objectives of the medium-term economic strategy. This is the context in which we are tasking local authorities, together with the local community development committees, to prepare integrated local economic and community plans for their areas for the first time. These plans will have economic and community elements which will be prepared separately, but in parallel. Both elements will be prepared in consultation with the public, with relevant public authorities, with the regional assemblies and with the municipal district members.

There will be ample opportunity to ensure synergies in the development of the economic and community elements, through the timing of public consultations on both elements, availability of drafts in parallel and meetings of the SPC and the LCDC being held in the same timeframes. The local economic and community plan must be consistent with the local development plans made by the elected members and with the regional, spatial and economic strategies. The making of these strategies will be a matter for the elected members in the regional assembly. The local authority will be tasked with drafting the economic elements of the plan, and I have provided a power for the Minister to give a role to the new SPC for economic development and enterprise in this regard. The LCDC will be tasked with preparing the community elements of the local economic and community plan.

Implementation strategies and arrangements must be put in place and led by the local authority and the LCDC, respectively, for the economic and community elements of the local economic and community plan. These will be reviewed and updated annually, and the local authority must report on the successes or otherwise of their implementation of these plans each year in their annual report. It will be a matter for their members to approve the text of the annual report as a reserved function, giving them a further opportunity to ensure that the implementation of their economic and community plan is properly driven and led. In that context, I am proposing amendments Nos. 135, 144, 145, 146 and 149.

There are also two technical amendments, one of which inserts an indefinite article in the text to correct the grammar, while the other relates to the definition of the local economic and community plans. In that context, I am also proposing amendment Nos. 106 and 130.