Michael Ring (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Senator would have a bigger problem with me if that money was unspent at the end of the year. I am not to blame. The Leader companies are. We made 31 changes to the Leader programme. I want to see it implemented. I want to see more jobs created and to see that funding put into community organisation, businesses, hubs and job creation. I do not want to see the companies sitting around, as they are now doing. Today we have made our 500th approval in respect of the Leader programme. It is beginning to happen. I expect more to happen next year and the year after. Others have criticised me about the Leader programme but everybody knows - and the Senator was involved in the community sector herself - that it takes two years to wrap up the Leader programme by the time applicants get their approval and start drawing down the money. The money is there. There was €40 million available last year. It was not drawn down and I had to look at ways and means of ensuring that money did not go back to the Exchequer. That is what I am at.

I am very proud of setting up the LIS. People talked about it. At a recent committee I reminded my Independent colleagues in the Dáil that they have an Independent colleague who knows a lot about rural Ireland and knows that the LIS has certainly been a valuable scheme. I will continue it again next year. It will not be funded with money taken out of any other scheme. It is in a programme that I will be announce early in the new year. I hope the local authorities will draw it down together with any further funding we may have. We will welcome any funding local authorities, the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport or anybody else wishes to contribute to the LIS. I have now set up the scheme and I hope they will all contribute to it.

The Senator is quite correct on jobs. Take the hub in Belmullet for example. Senator Ó Céidigh also talked about the issue. I have not always been the biggest fan of Údarás na Gaeltachta but in recent years it has got its act together and is now doing a fine job. It is doing fine work in job creation. Senator Ó Céidigh is quite correct, it does not get the funding the IDA or other State agencies get. I will look at how it can assist and help me with some of my schemes. As Senator Conway mentioned, funding for some schemes has not been drawn down by local authorities. I might look at ways and means in which Údarás na Gaeltachta, the Leader companies or some other State agencies such as the Western Development Commission might be able to administer these schemes. If councils are telling me they do not have enough staff or resources, I must look at other ways to roll out these schemes.

Senator Higgins spoke about communities. She is quite correct. Communities are very important, as is volunteerism. Many Members spoke but none mentioned the funding of €1,000 to €3,000 I gave to towns involved in the Tidy Towns competition, as well as the €4,000 given to bigger towns involved. Next year is the 60th year of that competition. That funding is not grant aid to the Tidy Towns competition. It is a commitment to, and funding for, every town, village and community in this country. That money will be spent in the local village. It will be spent in the local community for the betterment of the community and of society. I want to put my thanks to the Tidy Towns committees across the country on the record of the Seanad. They do work the State does not. We see these committees in Belmullet, Westport, Belcarra and all across the country. I was recently down in Cork meeting with such a group. There were 30 or 40 there waiting for me. They were so proud of the place where they lived. If we could get that community spirit in every corner of this country we would not have many difficulties.

Senator Higgins mentioned the seniors alert scheme. I am glad to say that we launched it on 19 October. We had a great campaign and 2,650 people have already made applications and have been approved. I had to put a further €400,000 into the scheme this week. I was delighted to do so because it means that our senior citizens will at least get the pendants, whether for their hands or their necks, and will feel safe in their own homes. I am delighted to do that.

The Senator also talked about public procurement in respect of SICAP. I will read this for her: "In accordance with the Public Spending Code, legal advice, good practice internationally and in order to ensure the optimum delivery of services to clients, SICAP is subject to a public procurement process". There is nothing I can do. I do not disagree with what she is saying. Whether it is in respect of SICAP or any of these community schemes, she is quite correct. I saw it myself in inner city Dublin. I saw the community coming out. I saw people with young children teaching them how to read, how to write and how to do whatever they had to do in society. I want to see these schemes working. This is a job I have been given in government. There are many organisations drawing down from the same pool. There are organisations which need a bit of funding, help and support. Where they are working, I want that work to continue. Where they are not working, we have to look at them and at other ways to provide services.

The community remit is being transferred to me from the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection in January. Of course I will talk to my officials about ways in which funding, whether for RAPID, for SICAP or for community programmes, can be targeted at the areas where it is required. There are many such areas and it is not only a rural issue. It is an urban issue as well. We have both. In urban areas all over this country we have very serious and difficult problems.

Senators raised many other issues. We talked about rural post offices and we talked about broadband. The Government recently decided to make €30 million available to post offices. It is a big challenge. I want to put it on the record that post offices will not close if people use them. I put that on the record of the Dáil or the Seanad at every opportunity I get. Many people do not use post offices. The only time they stand in a post office is when there is a protest. The Government has to look at ways in which we can support post offices. The Senator is quite correct on the social protection contract. That contract has been given to the post offices. We need to look at other services. While I acknowledge that An Post has come to the Government with plans and will be coming with future plans, it must look at other business models to help. We want to keep as many post offices as possible open. I say that against myself. Some post offices have 20 or 25 transactions a week and they will not stay open. There are other post offices which could be kept open if they got a small bit of support, a bit of back-up and a few more services. It is not an urban problem or a rural problem, but both. There are rural post offices and urban post offices. Both are needed. I do not know the difference between urban and rural anymore because of the way in which society is changing.

I think I covered everyone who spoke. Senator Colm Burke talked about broadband and tourism. Tourism is a big issue, particularly in rural Ireland, and that is everywhere whether it is the midlands, the Border counties, or the west.

What infrastructure did we put in place for the Wild Atlantic Way? None; the infrastructure was there. We had the best infrastructure in this country. What we did was to go out and promote it. We put up a few signs and some signature points. We got the communities to buy in along with the tourism sector. We got everyone to buy in and that is why it is so successful.

Ireland's Ancient East is another proposition that we looked at. Again, communities bought into it. They saw a market there for themselves. Fáilte Ireland is now doing a plan for the midlands. The midlands have something unique and we need to be able to promote it and sell it.

It is similar to the position with communities. The Government cannot do everything for everybody if communities themselves are not out there working and supporting one another. One can see it in the sports capital programme and in the CLÁR programme, and in the town and village scheme, which is one of the better schemes we have introduced in the last year.

We talked about hubs. Senator Ó Céidigh referred to them. Look at Drumshanbo. Senator Feighan knows about this because he was there when we opened a brilliant enterprise, where we had given them €700,000. The day we were there was fantastic. Someone in the tourism sector told me that there are now thousands of people there every week. It has lifted Drumshanbo. We have now given them €1 million to bring the project into Leitrim village and Ballyshannon. It will open the towns and villages and keep people working in rural Ireland.

The more investment we can target the better. Senator Conway-Walsh referred to this. It is about money and we must make sure that the infrastructure is in place. The Gort to Tuam bypass has lifted that area and we need to continue it to the N5, from Tuam to Claremorris, down into Sligo and up into Letterkenny. We have to open up the north west. The Atlantic economic corridor is something in which I have a big interest. We must get our infrastructure in place to ensure that we can compete with the east coast. It is important that we get jobs into the regions. The first quarterly report for the CSO said that 77% of jobs created this year were created in rural Ireland. We need to spread them out more, get more jobs into rural Ireland, get more infrastructure and get them the supports and the help they need to create jobs because jobs keep people, they keep schools, shops and post offices. That is what it is all about. It is my job at Government level to make every Minister accountable to me, to Government and to rural Ireland.