Department reviews 38 plans for LEADER funding
Business plans have been sought from local action groups — local development companies which include the 38 newly-established integrated LEADER partnership companies being set up around Ireland since 2006.
Groups have submitted 37 plans, but the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs received two business plans from Co Clare and two from Co Wexford. All plans are undergoing evaluation.
No more than 20% of LEADER funding can be allocated to administration costs within local action groups.
LEADER money cannot be used by a LEADER partnership company for partnership actions.
The Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs may also introduce “sunrise” clauses, enabling clawback of funding, if the funded projects do not get under way within a time limit.
The department will pre-check a 5% sample of projects for funding eligibility.
LEADER partnership companies are expected to play the main role in delivering the LEADER scheme.
The Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs’ introduced funding in 2006 to integrate LEADER and Partnership groups (including Community Partnerships) so that local development programmes and rural development programmes such as LEADER and the Rural Social Scheme are delivered by one body in each area. A one-stop-shop approach to rural development countrywide was one of the aims.
As a result, full rural development services are being extended to the Beara and the Sheep’s Head peninsulas in Co Cork for the first time, according to Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs Minister Éamon Ó Cuív.
However, establishing the new integrated companies has been dragging on, and the minister has warned them their interim funding was to cease after 24 July if they have not got required articles and memoranda of association and elected a board or a chairman.
“The resistance of the boards at the last minute to holding open and democratic processes of electing those boards concerns me. Many of the boards fought a rearguard action in the past year, even though their terms of office had ended before they held elections to the new boards,” said Mr Ó Cuív.
“A total of €200 million of State money per year, that is €1 billion in five years, in addition to all the other programmes they run, means that the boards must be accountable not only in terms of the way they spend the money, but how they got there in the first place,” he warned.
Partnership boards of 23 or 24 members must have four local authority representatives per board, a nominee of the county manager, someone from the county enterprise board, representatives of State agencies and people elected from the community and voluntary sector. Directors of community and enterprise, who are not members of the board, must have a role in determining the process by which people from the community and voluntary sector would be elected to boards. Representatives of the social partners — farmers, employers and the unions — also serve on the board.
The election process must be approved by the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs.
“I stress that I am not willing, under any section of my department, to fund any group or agency for the sake of creating employment for employees,” warned the minister. “The employees are there to provide services to people at the maximum efficiency and at the minimum cost.”
