Rural development campaigners criticise EU Leader fund plan

A Government move to bring the current €250 million EU Leader fund under the control of local authorities will make funding decisions subject to political interference, rural development advocates have claimed.

An Oireachtas committee was told the move was "bonkers", a "smash-and-grab raid", that it "needs investigating" and would swap community initiative for "a dependency culture".

EU Leader funds aim to promote rural development organised at a local level.

Under previous Leader programmes, local community partnerships administered grants for enterprises which would provide employment and development in rural areas.

However, in some 25 out of 28 applications from regional development groups for administration of the Leader programme for 2014 to 2020, the Government gave the job of administering grants to organisations which are part of a local authority structure.

Addressing an Oireachtas committee on sustaining rural communities on Wednesday, a number of regional development advocates claimed this transfer of responsibility would undermine the EU’s desire for capacity building in rural communities.

‘Proper evaluation’

Sinn Féin Senator Rose Conway-Walsh called for “a proper evaluation about how things are done by local authorities”.

She said the Leader fund “built capacity in rural areas until it started to be interfered with”.

It was now a “bureaucratic nightmare” that would create “a dependency culture”, she said.

Ms Conway-Walsh said the move would make Leader subject to “political interference in decisions that will be made”.

Meanwhile, Ian Dempsey of the West Cork Development Partnership said that of the 28 separate applications for the Leader programme, community development groups who joined a local authority structure won in 25 cases.

He said the Government had effectively set up a competition while stating “what its preferred outcome was”.

Mr Dempsey said the European Commission was investigating the West Cork Development Partnership's complaint that it had lost out in the Leader selection process after 25 years in local development administration because the process was not completely transparent and fair.

He said: “What happens if we can’t get Leader right, as the primary tool for delivering it is so deeply flawed and dysfunctional?”

Sinn Féin Senator Trevor Ó Clochartaigh accused local authority chief executives of a “smash-and-grab raid” on the Leader funds and said the removal of “bottom-up” community responsibility was “bonkers, a disgrace and needs investigating”.