Stephen Cadogan: No grants yet from 2014 rural development scheme
Faster progress in the 2014-2020 LEADER rural development grant programme is one of the low hanging fruits which the Government should be able to harvest in its 270- actions Plan for Rural Development launched in January.
Instead, only a fraction of the funding provided for LEADER this year will be spent on projects, predicted Fianna Fáil spokesperson on regional, rural, gaeltacht and island affairs, Éamon Ó Cuív, this week.
Criticism has also come from within Fine Gael, with Senator Michelle Mulherin recently saying “the delivery of LEADER is going nowhere fast”.
LEADER 2014-2020 only became fully operational late in 2016, after completion of funding agreements with local action groups in 28 sub- regions, in the previous coalition government’s entirely new LEADER framework.
In Senator Mulherin’s native Co Mayo, €11m of LEADER funding was allocated, and the programme had been live for eight months, but no grant applications were yet approved, and no funding allocated, much to the frustration of local community development committees, and grant applicants.
Complaints to Senator Mulherin indicated that the EU’s Article 48 checks, as interpreted by Pobal (which manages programmes on behalf of the Government and the EU), were overly bureaucratic, and make it too difficult for applicants to get a grant.
Senator Mulherin said Pobal was brought into this new LEADER programme in order to operate checks and balances where substantial sums of taxpayers’ money money are being given out.
She said it seems Pobal comes back again and again seeking information, sometimes additional information it had never sought in the first place.
LEADER funding of €250m (including EU co-financing) is available up to 2020 to support economic development, job creation, social inclusion, and the environment.
Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs Minister Heather Humphreys confirmed at the end of March that no LEADER project expenditure had yet been incurred, but expenditure of about €1.35m had been incurred in 2017 for administration and animation costs by the Local Action Groups (LAGs) who deliver the programme.
She said 15 projects with a total value of €308,136.37 had been approved for LEADER funding, and 3,953 expressions of interest from potential project applicants, with projects of estimated value over €183m, had been received.
She will have an opportunity to hear for herself how LEADER is being received on the ground, in her planned series of visits to as many rural communities as possible, together with the Government’s rural ambassador, Pat Spillane.
She says the approval of LEADER funding for individual projects is a matter for the LAGs, and she has no function in relation to those matters.
She has also revealed there is no LEADER 2014-2020 local development strategy yet in much of east Galway, and she must wait for an independent selection committee to review the strategy before she can sign a funding agreement for the delivery of the region’s €7.7m LEADER 2014-2020 programme.
This is symptomatic of a scheme so hogtied by bureaucracy that the Minister may be unable to speed it up if she so wished.
Bearing in mind that funding for the scheme has been reduced as much as 50% in some areas, compared to its 2007-13 predecessor, this flagship of the Government’s plan for rural development does not inspire confidence.
The EU wants to extend the LEADER method into more integrated use of all the EU structural and investment funds (EAFRD, ERDF, ESF, EMFF) for rural communities.
But at this stage, it looks like Ireland will do well to utilise LEADER funding within the time allowed, and extending the LEADER method is unlikely.
