Fidelma Healy Eames (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State. I wish to outline for her the reason Galway County Council's municipal district of Connemara should be designated as a separate stand-alone lot under the social inclusion programme, SICAP, and to suggest social inclusion funding should be awarded accordingly. The decision taken by the Department, overseen by Galway County Council, has caused uproar in Galway. On 12 March I attended a meeting of 650 people at Maam Cross in Connemara. The decision made at the meeting was to make Galway, including Connemara, it one lot for the receipt of funding under the SICAP. Previously it had been divided into two lots. East Galway had come under Galway Rural Development, GRD, and west Galway under Forum Connemara.

Galway is the second largest county in the country and east and west Galway are radically different, as I know being a public representative for the county. West Galway, west of Lough Corrib, includes Connemara, while, for the most part, east Galway is a different constituency. I live in east Galway, in the Oranmore electoral division. I am very happy with the services provided by Galway Rural Development which has won this funding, but that does not mean Connemara should not be a stand-alone lot. It is a vast area which contains more than one third of the population of the county. Its terrain and everything else are different.

I support Forum Connemara and wish to explain why Connemara should be designated as a stand-alone lot. The proper way to deal with this issue is to divide Galway into two lots, one encompassing the area west of Lough Corrib, Connemara, and the other the east, the GRD area.. Unfortunately, this did not happen and for that reason, I call on the Minister to make it happen. I spoke about the meeting I had attended, attended by 650 people, and their disillusionment with the decision which had been made.

I have grave concerns about how the local community development committee, LCDC, put the new arrangement in place, through the acting county CEO. It seems to be undemocratic and divisive. There are serious concerns about the way in which the vote on the designation of the SICAP took place, when only five of the 19 people were eligible to vote. Everyone else had a conflict of interest or was absent. This has serious implications for the committee as regards future decisions, not least on the distribution of these funds.

On the night of the meeting, with others, I called for a public inquiry into this decision. I understand a judicial review is under way, although I cannot confirm any more this. If Forum Connemara is dismantled in this fashion, will it not also affect the committee's membership and eligibility?

Let me outline some of the benefits to be gained from reviewing the decision. The provision for one lot only in terms of SICAP funding for Galway means social exclusion, not social inclusion, the opposite of what we want to happen. The general view at the meeting was that Forum Connemara was of vital importance to the community in Connemara. There is hardly a person in Connemara who has not had some contact with its services. People told their stories about the value of Forum Connemara to every demographic grouping in Connemara.Young people, sports people and older people spoke. For example, the only working acupuncturist in Connemara started her practice in 2010. She provides a health service to 420 people who are rurally isolated in the area. These are people whom the mainstream health service had been unable to help and for whom travelling to Galway, a distance of possibly 50 or 60 miles, for this service was difficult and expensive. Had it not been for the services of FORUM in Letterfrack, she says she would not be in the position she is in today. She says she received guidance and support in starting a new business from FORUM when Enterprise Ireland in Galway would not even reply to her e-mails or telephone calls. She now pays tax whereas before she drew down jobseeker's allowance and she buys locally and circulates her earnings locally. She says the new arrangement would suggest she would have to travel to Athenry under the GRD-----