Pat O'Neill (Fine Gael)
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Amendments Nos. 35 to 39, inclusive, have been ruled out of order.

Pat O'Neill (Fine Gael)
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Amendments Nos. 40, 42, 43, 45, 46, 47, 49, 50, 56 and 57 are related and will be discussed together. Is that agreed? Agreed.

Diarmuid Wilson (Fianna Fail)
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I move amendment No. 40:

In page 49, line 23, before “members” to insert “at least 3”.

Phil Hogan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael)
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I do not support amendment No. 40, but we will discuss the issue with amendment No. 47, when we come to it. Amendments Nos. 42 and 43 propose additional categories to be covered in regard to the membership of committees. I do not agree that a reference, as proposed, to drawing members from communities of interest is required, because section 128D (2)(d) already provides for members to be drawn from representatives of local community interests and this includes communities of interest. A key aim is to ensure a tight focused membership of the committees. The proposed amendments to provide, for example, for guaranteed membership for representatives of all social partnerships would inevitably result in a larger than intended membership. It is well known to all here today that we have had a plethora of large committees and boards, where frequently their effectiveness suffers due to the size of the membership. The recommendation made to me by the expert group that studied local development alignment was to keep the committees as small and as focused as possible. Accordingly, I do not support these amendments.

Similarly, I do not support amendment No. 45, concerning the nomination of elected members to local community development committees. When the chief officer is seeking nominees for the local community development committee, he or she shall do so in consultation with the corporate policy group, CPG, as a result of an amendment that was accepted on Committee Stage. Given that the process for selecting nominees will now be carried out in consultation with the CPG, I oppose amendment No. 45.

This argument also applies to amendment No. 46, which proposes that the elected members to be nominated to the committee shall have been elected by the local authority. I will, in due course, bring forward regulations to cover the detailed arrangements for the nomination by various stakeholder bodies to the local community development committees and in doing so, I will consult with the representatives of elected members to ensure a fair and reasonable process is followed in the nomination of elected members to the committee.

I do not support amendment No. 47, relating to local authority membership and the chairmanship of local community development committees. The legislation, as drafted, reflects the balance between the status of the committee as a committee of the local authority on the one hand and the independence of the committee in the performance of its functions on the other, for example, for the purposes of drawing down EU local development funds. A guarantee that the chairperson should be drawn from a specific sectoral interest or that a specific sectoral interest should have a minimum number of members would undermine the independence of the committee and impact on its eligibility as an implementer of key EU local development programmes. Given this requirement, I am not in a position to support the amendments as proposed. However, I should point out that elected members may very well be the chair of these committees. This has already happened in the case of County Cork.

Amendments Nos. 49 and 50 relate to the making of regulations regarding local development community development committees. As proposed, amendment No. 49 would require the Minister to consult with non-governmental organisations, community groups and communities of interest when making ministerial regulations. I do not believe it would represent an effective process to consult with stakeholders in the very wide manner envisaged by the proposed amendments on each occasion that regulations are to be made or amended. However, I believe that consultation with citizens and communities is very important in the workings of the committees and in that regard the Bill provides significant avenues of consultation for citizens and communities in regard to the work of the LCDCs. For example, committees will be required to consult with members of the public in the preparation of the local economic and community plans. Moreover, I will provide for participation by the local community in local government in a more general way through the implementation of the recommendations of the working group on citizen engagement.

Amendment No. 50 proposes to remove the provisions that the Minister may consult with public authorities, as he or she considers appropriate, in the making of regulations. There is a range of public authorities with whom it would not be appropriate to consult, such as those with no involvement or interest in local development or community development. Therefore, I do not support the deletion of the text as proposed as this would require the Minister to consult with all public authorities.

I do not support amendment No. 56 as proposed. The amendment seeks to insert a provision in section 128, which deals with local community development committees, regarding what the amendment calls a working group on active citizenship. Section 44, relating to consultation with local communities, was accepted already on Committee Stage in the Seanad. This provides the framework for a range of measures which will flow from the recommendations of the working group on citizen engagement, which I am currently considering. Therefore, the amendment that has been proposed to section 128 is not necessary.

Amendment No. 57 seeks to add to the bodies designated as relevant bodies in section 128F. Section 128F (1) and Schedule 16 prescribe those bodies that shall be considered to be relevant bodies for the purposes of ensuring co-operation with the work of the local community development committees. It is envisaged that the programmes managed and delivered by the bodies listed as relevant bodies in the Bill will be the first to come within the provisions of section 128F. However, new bodies will be added to the list of relevant bodies by ministerial order as new arrangements are agreed with the LCDCs for the implementation of programmes by bodies other than those listed. Similarly, when more programmes come within the remit of the local community development committees, the list of bodies coming within the scope of section 128G and therefore deemed to be the relevant bodies will be expanded. The fact that the groups mentioned in the amendment are not designated as relevant bodies in 128F does not indicate a lack of recognition of the role of these groups in local and community development.

Paschal Mooney (Fianna Fail)
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I second the amendment. I am rather intrigued by the Minister's explanation in regard to all of the amendments submitted on membership of the local community development committees. On one hand, he has robustly defended what he sees as the prior role of elected members over those who are not elected. He has talked about the fact that community groups will come to the council but that this will be in consultation. He disabused us of the notion that they would be in any way subservient, but at the same time, he made it clear that he was here defending the elected members. This is all fine and dandy. It is right and I agree with him.

However, why is it the Minister is leaving the provision so loose in regard to the membership of local development committees. In general, he refers to the committee including members, representatives, individuals and other such persons or bodies as may be provided for. I get the impression - correct me if I am wrong - that the Minister will issue, by regulation, the number of people who will serve on the committees, in other words, the total membership of the committees. There is nothing in the Bill to indicate whether there will be five, ten, 15 or 20 members on a committee, so I assume the Minister will make that decision by regulation.

If so, I assume he will also, by regulation, define the number of members in each of the various categories. In other words, he will say there will be three or four members of the local authority, X number of representatives of public authorities and X number of representatives. Otherwise, the system cannot work. There must be a starting point and we must know how many members the committee will have and this membership must then be divided out on a proportionate basis. That is the nub of the question. Who will be in the ascendancy? Will it be the non-elected members or the elected members?

The reason I raise this issue is that when the local development companies first started in the late 1990s, one of the major bugbears elected members had was that they found themselves in a situation where they sat on local development partnerships.

There would have been four representatives in the local partnerships. They found that because the funding was bypassing the local authority and going directly from the European Union or, in some cases, Dublin, an individual who had contested the previous local elections and had lost out to one or other of these four members was, as chairman of the committee or partnership, in a much more powerful and influential position because he or she had money to dish out. It was a great source of annoyance and frustration to elected members who found themselves competing, as it were, with non-elected members. I raise this matter because I wonder if the balance will now tilt towards the elected members.

I am not in any way trying to take away from the enormously important work done by community groups. It is vitally important that the membership of local community development committees be as widely representative as possible of the communities in which they operate, even if that means that there is a substantial and significant number of non-elected members. The question is whether the Minister will try to achieve a balance or will there just be token representation by local authorities, with the overwhelming majority of those on the committees being non-elected members. That may lead back to the difficult situation in which the partnerships found themselves at the beginning. I am not expressing any criticism of the work the partnerships have done as they have evolved since 1997. They have done extraordinary work and continue to do so. I hope the Minister will ensure those who are now working with the local development companies will still have an important role to play.

David Cullinane (Sinn Fein)
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A number of my amendments were ruled out of order. I will speak to amendments Nos. 42 and 43 which were deemed to be in order.

Amendment No. 42 seeks to include representatives of the social partners as members of local community development committees and also communities of interest. The Minister has gone some way towards answering the second issue regarding communities of interest, but I am sure he will agree that the social partners have played a very important part in the development of the State. The city and county development boards will be dissolved once the new arrangements come into being, but representatives of the social partners, including the trade union movement, business groups, farming organisations and so forth, sat on these boards. While there may have been some difficulty with the operation of the boards in overall terms, the social partners added some value. I accept that when one is trying to put together the membership of any committee, one does not want it to become cumbersome or unwieldy. One wants the committee to be able to function and work effectively. However, at the same time, one also wants the membership to be as wide-ranging as possible.

We also sought in an amendment that was ruled out of order to have the specific needs of minority groups represented. I ask the Minister to respond on that issue. It might be wise to have representatives of some specific statutory agencies on the committees, but our amendment to that effect was also ruled out of order. We asked that the issue of social inclusion be prominent in the development of the plans. Our amendments were seeking to improve the operation of the committees which would come into being in order to ensure they would be as representative and wide-ranging as possible and add value for all of the people we represent. It is important that the plans do exactly what is needed and if that is to be the case, they must have the support of as many groups and organisations as possible. If statutory agencies, social partners and certain community interest groups, particularly those representing minorities, are outside the door, that will not be good in the longer term. That is why we are seeking to improve this section by tabling a group of amendments, some of which, unfortunately, were ruled out of order.

Phil Hogan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael)
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I agree with the Senator's sentiments. What we are trying to do is rebalance the powers in favour of the elected members who were frustrated in recent times when the finances of local authorities were in difficulty and they saw an enormous amount of activity in their communities in the form of EU programmes into which they had little or no input. What we are doing is aligning the community with local government. We are not excluding anybody but including everybody and getting people to work more closely together at a time of finite resources to ensure we get the best possible results for the community without the enormous administrative costs that were a feature of various programmes in the past. I am showing some flexibility in terms of the numbers in bands and guidelines that I will lay down. In many of the Border counties, for example, peace programmes are operating in addition to the usual statutory programmes being implemented by the Government in the Republic. Therefore, there is a good reason for representation on local community development committees to take account of some of the existing programmes that will continue into the future, particularly in the context of the European Union's bottom-up approach to certain funds. My Department is consulting on a regular basis about the next round of EU funds and programmes to determine the most appropriate structure in order to get the best value for money and maximise the amount of money that goes to projects.

The elected members and the statutory bodies will not be allowed to dominate the local community development committees. If, for example, a committee has 15 members, eight must be non-statutory, non-elected and non-local authority representatives. The 15 members can decide who will chair the committee. In most cases, there will be three representatives of the local authority system, two of whom will be elected members, while the other will be an official. It will be up to the 15 members to decide who will chair the committee. As I said, in one of the pilot programmes we run in Cork a local community development committee has already been established and an elected member has become the chairperson. It depends on the relationship people have with their community. Elected members must foster that relationship and if they wish to become chairpersons of their local community development committees, there is nothing to stop them from doing so.

If all of the social partners want to be represented, as Senator David Cullinane has suggested, something will have to give. That something would probably be the local development companies, the partnership companies or the community sector. We should not have an unwieldy number of members of any group, but at the same time, we should have everybody, in so far as it is possible to do so, represented. It is very important that the representatives in the local community development structures - whoever they may be - are able to feed back the necessary information to their communities in a much more structured way than we have seen in the past. We do not want a repeat of the situation where people - often from the community sector - sat on committees but did not engage with those who had put them there. We need a more structured approach in that regard and that is what I am seeking to in the Bill. That is also why I asked Fr. Seán Healy and his committee to come up with proposals to improve matters further in order that everybody would know what was going on and everybody would have an input. The final decisions, however, will be made by the local community development committees. They will have the money and receive the applications for funding, while the funds will be dispersed through the existing financial structures of the local authorities. That will save money because we are using a structure that is already in place. It also bolsters the local government system, but it does not in any way denigrate the community projects that will come through the community sector and the elected members to the local community development committees.

Maurice Cummins (Fine Gael)
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I welcome what the Minister has just said. In the context of minority groups, I am sure that the vast majority of Members of this House received correspondence from various Traveller groups which had some concerns about the Bill. I am sure the Minister also received that correspondence and hope the rights of minorities will be considered and not diminished as a result of the Bill. In that regard, the assurances the Minister has given are welcome and will copperfasten this. If he has not received the correspondence to which I refer, including suggested amendments, I will gladly forward it to him. I hope the points raised therein will be considered when the Bill is brought back to the other House if they are not dealt with in this House.

Phil Hogan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael)
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I assure Senator Cummins that in so far as is possible there will be structures in place that will ensure we will have the greatest level of participation and input from the community sector irrespective of whether they are a majority or a minority.

Pat O'Neill (Fine Gael)
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Amendment No. 41, in the names of Senators Cullinane and Ó Clochartaigh, is out of order. Amendment No. 42, in the names of Senators Cullinane and Ó Clochartaigh, has already been discussed with Amendment No. 40.

David Cullinane (Sinn Fein)
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I move amendment No. 42:

In page 49, between lines 35 and 36, to insert the following:“(f) representatives of social partners,”.

Diarmuid Wilson (Fianna Fail)
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I second the amendment.

David Cullinane (Sinn Fein)
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I move amendment No. 43:

In page 49, between lines 35 and 36, to insert the following:"(f) communities of interest,".

Paddy Burke (Fine Gael)
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Amendment No. 44 has been ruled out of order.

Diarmuid Wilson (Fianna Fail)
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I move amendment No. 45:

In page 49, line 42, after "nominees" to insert ", excepting the elected members of the local authority,".

Denis O'Donovan (Fianna Fail)
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I second the amendment.

Diarmuid Wilson (Fianna Fail)
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I move amendment No. 46:

In page 50, between lines 5 and 6, to insert the following:"(b) The elected members nominated to the Committee shall have been elected by the local authority.".

Denis O'Donovan (Fianna Fail)
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I second the amendment.

Diarmuid Wilson (Fianna Fail)
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I move amendment No. 47:

In page 50, line 19, after "chairperson" to insert "who should be a member of the local authority".

Denis O'Donovan (Fianna Fail)
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I second the amendment.

Paddy Burke (Fine Gael)
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Amendment No. 48 has been ruled out of order.

Trevor Ó Clochartaigh (Sinn Fein)
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I move amendment No. 49:

In page 50, line 37, after “authorities” to insert “and NGOs, community groups and communities of interest”.

Diarmuid Wilson (Fianna Fail)
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I second the amendment.

Trevor Ó Clochartaigh (Sinn Fein)
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I move amendment No. 50:

In page 50, line 38, to delete “as he or she considers appropriate”.

Diarmuid Wilson (Fianna Fail)
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I second the amendment.

Paddy Burke (Fine Gael)
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Is the amendment being pressed?

Trevor Ó Clochartaigh (Sinn Fein)
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Yes.

Paddy Burke (Fine Gael)
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Amendment No. 51 has been ruled out of order. Amendments Nos. 52 and 53 cannot be moved as they propose to amend text that was deleted on Committee Stage. Amendments Nos. 54 and 55 have been ruled out of order.

Trevor Ó Clochartaigh (Sinn Fein)
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I move amendment No. 56:

In page 52, between lines 26 and 27, to insert the following:“(5) The Minister may not include any recommendations or proposals from the report of the Working Group on Active Citizenship without—

(a) prior scrutiny and debate in both the Dáil and the Seanad;
(b) prior consultation with community groups, NGOs, and Communities of Interest.”.

Diarmuid Wilson (Fianna Fail)
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I second the amendment.

Trevor Ó Clochartaigh (Sinn Fein)
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I move amendment No. 57:

In page 52, line 34, after "Schedule 16" to insert the following:

"and the National Traveller Partnership, the National Collective of Community-based Women's Networks, the National Women's Council, The Community Workers Co-operative, Pavee Point, and the National Traveller Women's Forum".

Kathryn Reilly (Sinn Fein)
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I second the amendment.

Paddy Burke (Fine Gael)
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Is the amendment being pressed?

Trevor Ó Clochartaigh (Sinn Fein)
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Yes.

Paddy Burke (Fine Gael)
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Amendment No. 58 is out of order; it has been negatived in committee by the House.