Rose Conway Walsh (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Thank you. I congratulate the Minister on his new position. We are happy in Mayo and in rural Ireland to have somebody at the Cabinet table. There are huge expectations of the Minister and a lot of issues to be dealt with. I wish him well in his work. It is important for us all to work together.

I thank the Minister for coming to the House to address the very serious issue arising from the implementation of the 2014-20 Leader programme. He will know that all is not well in Leader-land. From 1992 to 2016, the programme was very successfully delivered by local development companies. He will also be aware that I worked for one of them myself, South-West Mayo Development Company, for many years.

The current Leader programme was launched on 31 July 2016, and was allocated €220 million to address poverty reduction, social inclusion and the economy of rural areas. A decision was made by the Minister's Government that the Leader programme would be delivered under the local authorities. This was in spite of thousands of people gathering in community halls and hotels all over the country to tell it that its decision was wrong and that it was trying to fix something that was not broken.

A number of issues are now arising as a result of this decision. First, the level of grant approvals at national level is extremely low although we are now 11 months into the programme. By way of comparison, I cite a mid-west local action group that, in previous iterations of the programme, at this stage in the process had spent €1.4 million of the grant aid. Under the current programme the same group has only spent €6,600. Another group had allocated €1.7 million by this point in the previous programme, yet in the current cycle, no grants have been finalised at this stage because of all the bureaucracy involved.

The estimated minimum timeline for the promoters seeking grant support from the expression of interest to the grant contract stage is now around nine months. This is totally unacceptable. The programme administration workload has trebled, reducing time for front-line staff to support communities and entrepreneurs to engage with the programme. The Minister's Department is contracting Pobal to audit 100% of the programme expenditure. This is unprecedented. The previous administration checks were carried out very effectively by local development companies. That is evidenced by the low level of ineligible funding in the 2007-13 programme, when it was at only 0.5% and incurred no additional cost. In reality, the local development companies continue to undertake the checks, passing them on to local authorities who, in turn, pass them on to Pobal for triplicate checks. The cost of this function may end up becoming very significant.

There are a couple of actions that the Minister can take. He can reduce the administration levels by identifying a lead Department to streamline the Leader funding to local development companies. He must utilise the available option of the simplified cost as well. It will enable Leader to focus on communities and achievements in the local development strategy. He must remove the expression of interest above all. I know there have been attempts to do so but it has not been done. It adds three months to the application time for promoters and is not working. The Minister must also remove the additional public procurement requirements, to streamline anything under €100.Travel and subsistence must be included because, again, there is huge bureaucracy surrounding that.