Connemara group questions Government stance on rural decline

The Government’s commitment to combating rural decline has been questioned by a Connemara development group which says it has been forced to shed eight jobs due to a centralisation of community funding.

The eight people attached to Forum Connemara were made redundant on February 10th, following the loss of one of two key community programmes for the area.

Forum Connemara, which has been involved in local initiatives for the past 25 years, said it had been “devastated” by the loss of the tender .

“This is equivalent in impact to a large factory closure in a city like Galway,” Forum Connemara Ltd spokesman Turloch Ó Cianáín said.

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Based in Letterfrack, Co Galway, the group has administered the Leader fund, among other European Union programmes, to the elderly, people with disabilities, young people and residents experiencing isolation and disadvantage.

While it still administers a €4 million Leader fund, it has lost its bid to run the separate social inclusion community activation programme (SICAP) for Co Galway.

The SICAP tender for the entire county was awarded to Galway Rural Development Company Ltd, which is based in the Athenry area in the east.

The decision was taken by Galway County local community development committee (LCDC) – one of series of committees set up as the "Putting People First" programme initiated by then minister for the environment Phil Hogan in 2012.

The LCDC system put in place by Mr Hogan was designed to ensure local authorities had a greater input in allocation of programmes such as Leader.

Bottom-up approach

Forum Connemara said this represented a total dismissal of the “bottom-up” approach to community development which the EU prefers for its schemes.

It initiated a legal challenge to the SICAP tender, arguing it was inappropriate for a development company “far removed from the western seaboard” to be administering such schemes for the entire county.

“Rural development can best be achieved through the provision of services from a locally-based development company which is fully informed and sensitive to both the people and the needs of the target region,” it said.

It also pointed out it made far more sense for a group to be administering two complementary programmes, as in both Leader and SICAP.

Former Galway county mayor and Fine Gael councillor Jimmy McClearn, who is chair of Galway County LCDC, said he regretted any job losses, but the focus had to be on those who benefited from the programmes.

The decision to accept the tender from Galway Rural Development Company Ltd was based on a report by an advisory group, and “everything was above board”, he said.

He said he did not wish to comment on the legal proceedings, but said that Forum still retained administration of Leader funding.

In a statement, Galway County LCDC said the courts had decided that the procurement process was “lawful”, and had put an initial stay on awarding the contract pending an appeal by Forum Connemara which is scheduled for late March.

However, this stay was subsequently lifted in December, the statement said. It said the new SICAP programme had been reduced to €1.6 million with a cap on administration costs at 25 per cent, and was now being delivered by one rural development company instead of two.

Mr Ó Cianáín said this reference to administration costs was misleading, and pointed out that there were two bodies implementing contracts in Mayo and Tipperary, three in Kerry and seven in Cork.

“There is certainly some irony that a programme which claims to assist the unemployed has been awarded in such a way that it has made eight people unemployed in Co Galway,” he said.

Separately, Connemara area councillors have voted to support a community action campaign to upgrade the N59 Galway to Clifden road. Galway County Council has indicated it would undertake temporary works from Oughterard to Bunakill before the summer.