Seanad debates

Thursday, 4 November 2004

1:00 pm

Photo of Pat MoylanPat Moylan (Fianna Fail)
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I welcome the Minister to the House and wish him well in his Department. A number of people have expressed their concern to me about the expansion of the West Offaly Integrated Development Partnership's area of operation as part of the LDSIP, to include Birr and south Offaly. The West Offaly Integrated Development Partnership became operational in 1996 as one of the three local development operations in Offaly, the others being Tullamore Wider Options and the Offaly and Kildare Partnership or OAK.

As the name suggests, the area of operation under the local development was to the west of the county while OAK primarily served the northern part of the county and Tullamore Wider Options became operational within the town of Tullamore. Sections of the county, most notably Meath-Offaly and south Offaly, were not covered by the local development programme.

Offaly is divided into four electoral areas. The area about which I am concerned is south-west Offaly. In 2000, ADM, with the sanction of the Department of Tourism, Sport and Recreation, agreed to the extension of the partnership's boundaries to encompass the remainder of the Ferbane electoral area. This meant an increase in the size of the area from 22 DEDs to 29, and an increase in the population base from approximately 10,500 to almost 14,000, based on 1996 statistics. The inclusion of the remainder of the Birr electoral area was not approved at that time as ADM's view was that the extension to cover the complete Birr electoral area would need detailed consultation and have further financial implications.

In 2001, an informal multi-agency group began working in partnership to identify options for addressing the lack of local development infrastructure in the south Offaly area. With funding secured from FÁS, this group has succeeded in putting in place a one-year pre-development initiative in the Birr area of south Offaly. The once-off funding from FÁS has enabled the appointment of a full-time development worker whose brief entails community needs analysis and strategic planning. As such, the detailed consultation referred to as a pre-requisite of further boundary extension can be regarded as under way.

My proposals set out a case for the inclusion of the remaining 83% of the Birr electoral area as part of the local development social inclusion programme, which inclusion would involve an extension to the boundaries of the development partnership's area of operation.

The people who will benefit most from the extension and those who benefited most from the west Offaly development include lone parents, long-term unemployed, disadvantaged women, people with low levels of educational attainment, families living in local authority housing or housing provided through other public housing schemes, people living in isolated rural areas, rural smallholders, disadvantaged children and young people, older people, early school leavers, Travellers and disabled people. The work being done by West Offaly Integrated Development Partnership with rural smallholders has been outstanding. Quite a number of small farmers have said to me that they would have sold out were it not for this work.

I thank the Cathaoirleach for affording me the opportunity to raise this matter on the Adjournment and I look forward to a favourable reply from the Minister.

Photo of Éamon Ó CuívÉamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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I thank Senator Moylan for raising this matter which touched upon a number of issues that we need to resolve. First, partnerships do not cover the whole territory. In rural areas in particular, disadvantage is not concentrated in spatial units. It tends to be dispersed across the board. Nobody could argue that south Offaly, to which Senator Moylan referred, is less disadvantaged than the rest of the county. One could argue that it is at least equally disadvantaged, if not more so.

The second issue is that we need to recognise that the funding was not exactly increasing in the past few years. There is no point in widening the area for which funding can be provided if one cannot finance it. However, we know many of the relevant groups have sought to expand their areas and I have great sympathy for this approach. There is much that they could do to help their own case.

This year, we asked the county development boards to bring together all the agencies in their counties to see how we could establish better synergies and thereby provide cover for areas that, until now, did not have the services of a partnership, for example. Offaly has the OAK partnership, Leader companies and the west Offaly local development social inclusion programme.

Ideally, I would like to see a county partnership or Leader company with its offices in the different regions of the county, but with only one centre of bureaucracy engaged in accounting and with all the focus on providing the services on the ground. That is a development that must come from the ground up. I will certainly not lay down the law to any group because I want to try to get groups to ascertain the best way to provide an integrated, comprehensive, one-stop shop service to all the people of the county.

If I included south Offaly, there would still be an area around Tullamore that would not be covered by a partnership. As sure as I am standing here, those concerned would say to me, quite legitimately, that there are disadvantaged people in the area. Therefore, I would rather develop, on a county-by-county basis, a comprehensive structure that would cover the whole of each county. We should examine the existing resources to create the efficient synergies so we can give more effect over a wider area right across County Offaly.

If many bodies are operating on the ground, people get confused, although we might believe we all know what they are doing. I agree with the Senator's sentiments but obviously I must make all my decisions with two considerations in mind, the first of which concerns money. This will always be a consideration. No matter how much money one has, one can always find more ways to spend it, as even the richest person can prove. The second consideration pertains to the creation of rational structures that are friendly to the people on the ground and which would cover the whole of County Offaly. It would be fair to say that there are probably no great differences in the mix of the people of any two rural areas in the county.

I thank the Senator for raising this issue which I will consider very seriously over the coming months, subject to finance being available and the willingness of the various players on the ground to co-operate in creating the synergies needed to bring about the radical change to which the Senator referred.