Rose Conway Walsh (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am in daily contact with Leader companies. I need to make the Minister aware that even some of the promises regarding expression of interest, Article 48 and procurement issues that were made during those meetings are being rolled back on and I ask him to look at this again. He will also be aware, looking at the whole programme, how much the funding has been cut. Even if we take Cork alone, the original programme was €49 million, it is down now to €13 million and in Mayo we lost out on €9 million. We need to look at the amounts of money each implementing partner has because they do not have sufficient money and there should be a cap on that so that at least each company gets €5 million in order to be able to do its work. I will work with the Minister in every way I possibly can on this programme. He knows what happened to us under Fianna Fáil and Meitheal Forbartha na Gaeltachta. We were left for years with no Leader programme whatsoever. I want to see this succeed as much as the Minister does.