MINISTER FOR Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs Eamon Ó Cuív has challenged the new rural development groups to hold elections before submitting business plans for funding from the €425 million package he recently announced.
The Minister said that he understood that a number of groups which will take over from the old Leader network boards had not yet held elections for the new boards, despite the fact that they knew this had to be done for the past two years.
It is understood that only five of the 50 groups that will be involved in rural development have so far held elections to choose boards to administer the scheme.
"We have a situation where plans are being drawn up which have to be submitted for funding by July 5th next by some groups which have not yet elected boards to ratify these plans," he said.
"If a general election can be organised in three weeks, I cannot see why it would be impossible for elections to these local boards, which are based mainly on county areas, be held before the end of this month," he said yesterday.
The Minister said a problem could arise if a plan had been submitted for funding from one of the 50 organisations involved and the board of management was unhappy with it, when elected.
"I think I would be outraged if I was a local councillor or any of the social partners if that situation arose in my area. That would lead to a democratic deficit," he said.
Mr Ó Cuív said that the whole basis of the rural development programme, which will in future be administered by Leader partnership groups, was that they should be fully democratic and have a "bottoms up" approach.
He said there were clear guidelines for the establishment of the new groups published by his department and that he would expect those parameters to be adhered to by those involved.
The plans drawn up by the groups would be independently assessed following their submission in early July and he had hoped that these would be ratified by Government in September.
The implementation of the rural development plan, which will run to 2013, had been delayed for two years because of a dispute between the Minister and the Monaghan/Cavan Leader partnership group. It brought a legal case to Brussels, but a ruling on this in early May cleared the way for the new scheme, which was announced last month.
Under the scheme, which the Irish Leader Network organisation said could lead to the creation of 10,000 jobs in rural areas, a whole range of activities will be grant aided.
These include diversification into non-agricultural activities, support for business creation, encouragement of tourism activities, basic services for the economy and rural population, village renewal and development, conservation and upgrading of rural heritage, and training and information schemes.