 With me on stage here, I might be the UAE independent TD for Kerry since 2011. He's the chair as well of the Joint Robust Committee on European Union Affairs, and he started a month before the Brexit vote, so we can blame him partially on him. With Moran Royal, of course, who is the CEO of Kerry County Council since 2014, before it actually was at a senior level in Cork County Council, it's not about how local government works and probably how the EU interacts with local government. That has changed to that, and probably will change to that as well. And we've got her burial shop, you can see, who is a senior lecturer at Cork University Business School, UCC. Her special interests in research and teaching includes social entrepreneurship and rural regions about it. So ideally placed tonight to talk about how that can help, maybe, or how the European Union interaction and that can probably make a difference for us. We're going to fire into the questions straight away, and as I said, we will be getting questions from the floor a little bit later on. Michael, I'll start with you, I suppose. You're, as I said, chair of the Robust Committee on European Union Affairs. You probably learned a lot over the last couple of years, and you came in a month before the vote, so that probably was influenced by Brexit. How has that been? Do you explain how that has been for you, what you've learned, and what that might inform people here tonight? Well, the first thing is that I've learned an awful lot in that we bring in witnesses every week into the committee, and it's a joint committee, so you have both senators and TV's on making up the committee. Very unusually for a group of politicians, I've had it up one time, and I think we have 272 years of experience in the committee. And it isn't that any one individual is very old or anything, but the people there are an awful lot of them are highly experienced. And it's a great committee in that there's no political rivalry in that. Like there's been a fall, there's should fame, there's fine game, and we're really of a common purpose, because of the problem that we have in Brexit and all the issues that we really pull very well together, and I very much respect the members of the committee because some of them are the hosts of the rotters, you know, top three, five and five years, and they have a lot of experience, and I really like that, because we learn a lot from people like that. But every week anyway, what do we actually do? We bring in witnesses, for instance, we meet with visiting visitable ministers and parliamentary delegations. We take part in the COSAC, the Conference of European Union in the First Committee from across Europe, and meetings are held in different countries shortly on a regular basis. And we attend the Revivalent Interparliamentary Committee meetings held in the European Parliament in member states. But for instance last week, we did a thing that I could never get over, hasn't been happening all along, and to be honest with you, it was in my insistence that we do it. We got all our ABPs. What's the same thing in the world? It never did all happen in Dahlia, could you imagine this? Like there was these big screens inside the committee rooms, but they were never ever used for anything. And one day I said, could we not use those just to keep our ABPs all together at the same time? And I was told, oh yes, we could do what we never did before. So we did this, and like we had nine or ten ABPs, and we were inside our meeting room, and they were all in process, and we were everything's right, and we looked at each other and engaged collectively, and it was great. And I mean, in the world we're living in, you would imagine that that's how the thing happens all the time, but believe it or not, it was the first time it ever happened in Dahlia. And like we should be doing that every day. And then we brought in people that didn't have to get out of the plane, and the wrong people are talking about their carbon footprint, for God's sake. It just makes so much sense to not put things like that. But anyway, I'm choosing them all these things, and it was an initiative. I stopped myself because I see them as a very underutilized resource. I meet with ambassadors and their staff, and they like it in our base in Dublin. Believe it or not, we have over a hundred ambassadors attached to Thailand, and the Moon Chamber, and all of which is frightening to think about it. But it's good to speak to them as well, and to build up a working relationship with them. So, all in all, we bring people from the different sectors, from all over Europe. We're dealing in overlap with the spokespersons that brings it from England. We're having shadows, folks, persons, and all these from that position. We bring them over, we ask them questions, we give them our opinion, they give us their opinion, and we try and learn a lot from them. Do you find or have you found a site from Brexit? Like there's a common theme of an issue that we probably don't realize here, because we're on the western edge of the continent. We see ourselves very far away, maybe from Dublin, or from Berlin, or from Paris, or from Brussels, we're on the edge. We feel about being rural in Ireland, a little bit more isolated, wanting to be part of the decision-making. Is that a common theme in the past year or week? The problem is people are moving from the country, as they can educate, or if they can educate, they move to jobs in cities, not just in Ireland, but elsewhere. Is it a combination that the European Union's going to have to try and deal with, how to keep rural areas alive? It is, and it's a very major problem. It's a very major problem. The Greenway in South Kerry is a big issue here at the moment, and people are considering it, and rightly so as a lifeline. Do not rule Ireland to send more people down to South Kerry. And if we don't have initiatives like that, we will have a situation where more and more young people will say, oh, well, there's no future here for me. And that's an awful thing for young people to say, because I have no problem at work with the young boy, or the young girl who wants to work as a train there, or America or England, but the thing is one's top. There's no problem with that. But I hate the idea of a person saying, I have to. My uncles and my aunts in the 1950s, they left my father's sisters and brothers. They left here, and the reason they left here was because they didn't have a fibre in their pocket. They didn't have a day's work. There was no future for them, and they went to America, and the reason they went to America was because they go to America, or they have nothing, and all you need is nothing. And they went to Putrum Factory, and they said they never came back. Where are the other people? In what we call the more modern times now, if they want to go to Australia, and if they want to go to America, that's lovely, that's great. That's leaving what you want to leave. But there's an awful difference between having to or wanting to. And you don't think that I should have been there. You brave your carry, you brave your carry to go box, but to cover the box, box, box, box. If they went out onto the streets, insure nearing the lab, anything, and if they said, relax the first 100 people we need, could you do one thing for me? Would you name no Indians? I can guarantee you out of 100. The right thing would be Detroit, I wouldn't be able to name you. So that you tell me the lack of connectivity we have with what was on in Europe. Yeah, not clear enough. Barbara, you talked a little bit about, I suppose, how you've seen to your work wanting to carry out the European Union interacts with the local authority and it makes a difference mainly or how much more social communication over the last couple of years and your work in caring. Look, there's, I suppose, the first thing I say, there's huge influence from the European Union and local government. And I suppose, you know, maybe kind of in the 90s when the structural funds were there, the cohesion funds were there, and you know, people could point to very big projects, so you know, you could come in to carry, maybe one time traveling around carrying a carry with European auditors and they literally made a stop so this is where you spend money, this is where you spend the money. So you know, big roads, all the way swathes and plants down around the coast of caring, that was all through structural funding. Like the thing, among the spharnes and truly the actual dorm, you know, you take the museum, some very big projects right across the country have been founded and leaders, you know, not a lot of money that's come from intro-leaders at that time as well. So I suppose, as time has moved and as the funding models have changed it's maybe this obvious in lots of ways and I think like one of the big influences that people talk a lot about funding and there is a lot of still European funding and I've just come to that, coming into the county but I think a huge impact has been on the local government implementing the European directors particularly around the environmental legislation and Michael mentioned there and I see consumer artists who will be very aware as well from the oral hearing at the South Terry Greenway is going out at the moment and you actually see that the huge focus is on how are we taking account of the environmental legislation in implementing the project it has become a very very major way, you know, if you take the landfill directors, how we're, you know 20 years ago the landfill director came in and you know, people thought it was bizarre that we would divert so much ways from landfill, look at where we are today you know, you take water policy the water framework directors each and every one of those even down to our public procurement with your accuracy in the public procurement would you look at the other end? Yes, it takes a long lead and time with the benefits of openness and better transparency so there has been a huge influence on local government how we even set ourselves up and how we interact from a community perspective so it has had huge influence even outside of the funding but today if you look at funding you know, we have a very strong leader program in the county it's not as much money as we'd like it obviously to be but at the same time we have more projects going and carrying forward to see even if they're from any KWD you know, running in the county than any other county in Ireland and I think that's something we should acknowledge the local enterprise offices most of the funding in the county which is support for small companies in the county run through local government a lot of funding that comes through Europe as well and like when you think of the impact on local enterprise offices that's a big one for us in Kerry because 9 out of 10 businesses are open enterprise companies 90% which people might realise 90% of companies in the county actually tie this into people so having a very strong local enterprise office is very, very important for us so see it and do you think then from that like you said people might realise do people realise the interaction with your two Kerry country well, I suppose maybe that's the kind of where I started like maybe 20 years ago we were quite big infrastructure people can identify big infrastructure the same problem as in the government sector sometimes people don't realise that they see the big projects but no, I don't think people probably do or sometimes it might be the negative connotations that the people associate more regulation than stopping people and might see this and Europe has done this but I think when you do look at the rafting and the influences that they have for good and positive it may seem that more or more people may not be doing the kind of business this is aid from Europe or this is good influence from Europe yeah, more about the way we need to go in that area you're very involved in I suppose entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship and social companies what do you think from the European Union your main approach is to fostering rural areas does it work well or does more need to be done in that area maybe you're getting involved in creating those type of businesses in an area like Harry to help address the rural depopulation problems that we have okay and I suppose the key point to begin the conversation really is that 25% approximately of the human population live in rural areas 50% of the population in Ireland live in rural areas we are quite unique in that regard and I think that's why it's very important to have these kind of conversations at a regional level I think it's great that the government is in the process of formulating a new national policy for rural development we haven't had one since 1991 and it's great that they've launched a national policy on social enterprise development because it refers back to what you're discussing about and of course when you look at entrepreneurship entrepreneurship is understood in very broad terms so we're looking at individual entrepreneurship farm based entrepreneurship community email entrepreneurship there's a lot of different approaches to entrepreneurship and I think that's very important for us to recognise that diversity in terms of sustaining the rural areas going forward one of the things that perhaps maybe I'm most familiar with is looking at the area of finance and that's why I'd like to maybe refer to maybe just issues around microfinance because microfinance Ireland operates with the support of European institutions and European policies so in 2012 microfinance Ireland was set up its purpose is to support the kind of small businesses that Moira has talked about in relation to those in regional and rural areas employing three people or less the ones that have a lot of the perhaps the headlines but yet are making a huge impact in a small world area and since 2012 and the benefit from a European point of view is that that was created under the European and Social Innovation Fund it was also part of the European Social Fund and since it began in 2012 it has approved loans of almost 80% outside of Dublin so it's a really good indicator of where this EU support for microfinance matched with some of the agencies that have been referred to the most important referral into microfinance are in fact the local enterprise offices and the Irish local development network so we see here very good complementarity between an EU objective to support small and micro enterprises and linking it with local governments and when you talk to us about social enterprises are you talking about maybe co-op model or is it the Irish sweater company from the Ireland Islands exporting total over the world? It can be I mean we this is the very first national social enterprise policy that Ireland has published and in fact there are quite, it's a very large family of social enterprises when you interpret them across the European landscape so you're right Jerry it does include co-operatives it includes other types of not-for-profit businesses it's essentially a business or an organization that has a very strong social societal or environmental mission but it has to be entrepreneurial and then it has to be trading it has to be engaged in doing things differently mixing up resources in order to sustain itself so there has to be an entrepreneurial side to it as well but what's unique about social enterprises is that they are really hybrid organizations so they have a social, they have an economic objective and they are very good at mobilizing resources in lots of different things through volunteerism through philanthropy through market and that's from our knowledge of the sector where we have been mapping these really since the early 1990s that's really what explains how they exist and how they operate and the importance of the new national social enterprise policies is to reflect that and not confine it to one particular type of social enterprise but rather the range of organizations that can potentially exist within that label Mike, if I could talk to you we've lots of talk about I suppose maybe sometimes the negative side of things but you're not allowed to by your regulations that are coming but on the Sunday in size of it and Mara talked there about social projects that were there at the moment it's a political controversy but the national broadband plan has been rolled out like I said last controversy about it but however the model that we have to fund is controlled by European Union rules you can't kill involved in state aid but then again you could argue look this is like rural electrification this is vital if we are to thrive and survive it's not like the state putting money into a failing airline so how do you see that relationship there that Ireland needs to develop it but we need to try and interact with Europe on it as well well yes it's as though we want to do it but our hands are one hand is tied behind or back at the same time because of the rules and regulations that are there but and one of the Arachtis committees on on communications and climate action gave ages debating this and when I say ages I mean they talked it to death came up with a set of conclusions as to where we should be going with regard to the plan what we should do what we shouldn't do what we could do and what we couldn't do and at the same time here we are and when I say we I mean we politically we're after going this way and that way and the other way and we still haven't delivered it and obviously this isn't a political thing sort of a sooch tonight that I don't want to be going down the political route of saying oh why this happened so it's not a place to do that but all I can say is it's incumbent on all of us and when I say I mean politicians to deliver a national broadband plan properly that will connect into rural Ireland in a way that whether you're in balance are black rock that you're a citizen of Ireland and one of the most basic and essential things you can have at the moment as much as you need the running water and the sewage facilities in your house you need broadband whether it is for your education purposes whether it is for work for leisure it's just a vital necessity in your home now and it is incumbent on all politicians all of us whether you're in government or in opposition to work and to ensure that that happens and obviously yes we are curtailed and and held in the way we can deliver it but it has to be delivered and I know that promises were given by present and past governments and not delivered upon and quite simply that's not good enough because you all know each and every one of you know like it's as important as there we breathe now virtually and you couldn't imagine how we can progress and develop properly without it and it is so unfair but when we say that we must remember that in the area that I represent there's an awful lot of place that we still don't have a proper mobile phone connection there are many places that we actually don't have a proper landline connection so is it any wonder then that people like me are continuously fighting for rural Ireland and saying well we want more and we need more and we have to have more quite simply because I think we have to be treated on the same footing we're taxpayers the same as everybody else and again it doesn't matter whether you're living in a city or whether you're living in you know down below in Gleesk and Sneem you're entitled to the services as good as anywhere else okay it might cost more to deliver it but the classic case in point one time it would have been maybe around 1998 my late father was fighting with a particular minister about getting it was a phone connection service that we needed for the Black Valley and this was not for the landline phone and the minister had his information ready he was have to do up this thing that what my father wanted was going to cost 26,000 per house the minister thought he was going to take the wind out of the sails of my father when he presented this document and he said Jackie how can we deliver this when it's going to cost 26,000 per house my father cut the piece of paper he threw down the ground I'll tell you how we'll deliver it he said absolutely no problem we'll let on there above in Dublin and that they're looking for it there but it's actually in the Black Valley and we'll give it to them and they did and that's how we got the proper phone service in the Black Valley but like you have to really fight for everything and I just want to say and it's not because Moira is here tonight but like I really believe that we're fortunate in Kerry in that both the members the local authority members and management of Kerry County Council they're really I'm always saying this I say it in the dial I say it at every public opportunity I get we're very fortunate with the local authority we have you could have an argument with them about this and that and other things but overall like the years that I gave Kerry County Council I really cherished it it was a real educational core for me I learned enough a lot from board management and other members and like they're based interest that are always the people of Kerry and the development of Kerry and like we have so much in County Kerry and whether it is working with the leader funding that has been brought in over the years and the way that has helped small communities grow and like 5,000 euros and Eamon rightly knows this better than anyone inside this room 5,000 euros to a certain person or a certain project at a certain time could mean such a massive difference to those people it could mean employment for years and years afterwards because it could give the person that little lift you know at a critical time and it's that type of incubation money that we need you know to get small things out the rounder so sustain them or help them buy that piece of machinery or you know build that bit of a building and we've seen it back over the years the funding that was administered truly there and all the other like the amount of different aid that comes from Europe is frightening and like when something goes wrong we're like we're all guilty of it we're inclined to say all the fellows in Europe do not they're the cause of it all but like if we were to have not joined for instance where would we be and my late mother used to always say she said oh yeah she had a perfect vision of what Ireland would be if we hadn't joined the EU very romantic vision we'd all be like it would take about eight or nine hours to drive to Dublin we'd all be going along these narrow roads and we'd have well we have one field now we'd have nineteen fields and like we'd be completely back in the thortes or the fortes but like damn it you have to progress you have to move on and I believe that we benefited greatly and by being members of the EU and I'd be a dedicated follower of that once and all yeah speaking of worth and all we're at the regulation that's there very often it can be traded in the media very often by some politicians we've seen the whole debate the last five years really in England we don't need Europe it's full of regulation let's free upper enterprise we can do what we want and do trade deals and all this regulation about the size of bananas and whoever came up with that but from your point of view like you talked earlier about the water infrastructure the wastewater the directives that are transposed the standards that are assessed to applying for funding it's a pain there's 20 pages now and there might have been one but it guarantees money comes in it guarantees less corruption more openness more transparency where do you stand now on that that situation with regards to their owners but maybe the standards that come from Europe between the different countries would never have been achieved or pushed from a centralized standard across Europe I suppose times move and I suppose it's back to what they're really raising and so far as you have to progress with it like I remember years ago being at a retirement and a person not in this county retired said you know God be with the days when you could draw a line on the road and build the road back to an earlier conversation we read earlier but here we are kind of three years later looking at the same road and sure we haven't even got to the point of the start and you know that's true I mean I suppose the regulation that that's required to convince any begin project and the amount of public input the amount of checks and balances you know from a local authority you can take one view and say God you know it's time it takes time you're maybe dealing with the public pressure and to deliver it but by the same token when you look and you look back and you say okay you know on balance you know you take a county particularly like Kerry with all the environmental designations that we have do you deliver a better project that's more balanced people have had more input you have taken your ecology into account you have taken your environmental factors into account so by the time you get to the other end and you look back you'd hope you'd have a much more sustainable project that road would be actually much more sustainable you might be a lot of headaches along the way you know I say the same about procurement and I talk about procurement because people probably don't realize but in Kerry here in Calarney on behalf of Kerry County Council we run the national shared service service procurement service for all the public service in two areas minor contracts and the other one's after which is terrible but anyway so in these two particular areas we head up for the country public service public procurement so we set up the frameworks and all the rest for them and I suppose the one thing I will say is that this has brought huge efficiencies when we look at our areas alone there has been millions multi-million cost savings over the last number of years because of the whole process that we put into the whole public procurement and it is a more transparent process at the end of the day can it be more difficulty for all involved perhaps it can but again once you start building it into your project planning then it just becomes part of the way you do your business and I think that's a big part of it the regulation that comes from once you get used to it and like anything else once it becomes part of your project and I think once people understand it's part of the process it's part of what's involved by and large I think people are accepting in the world I live in certainly I suppose the one thing I would say that can be difficult it can be it can be difficult to access in the sense of it can be the language can be difficult sometimes it can seem somewhat remote and sometimes you know it's one thing I would very much very strongly believe in Kerry County Council we don't go for funding unless it's a project we have a project and either we get up through national funds or we go through the European route and like we've had we've been very fortunate and truly we had the regeneration of the site a site we inherited from Kerry Group it was a gift at the time and I suppose we kind of thought it was a gift slash headache what are we going to do with the site and a funding opportunity came up through the ERDF and it's the island the regional development fund and the island of geese so we co-funded 1.5 million from the local economy Kerry County Council 1.5 million from the ERDF regional development fund which has allowed us to start the regeneration of that site so but again if we had we've had other projects in the county we've had one here around traffic alleviation in Kalarney we've had a regeneration truly has gone through 40 plus million regeneration and we've gone through the rural regeneration scheme and the urban regeneration scheme which are national funding streams I suppose we really don't mind where the money comes from in that assessment and when we're looking at the funding options certainly on the European sense but I suppose we can talk about Europe and we can talk about regulation but I suppose one of the real positive advantages I've seen in this county around our economic planning has been the whole best practice that comes from the learnings from Europe and in any of the projects and we've done a partnership with banks in the IT trilogy who are fantastic at the whole European models of best practice and one of the we are involved our economic officer is over in Brussels at the moment in an enterprise project that we've partnered with the IT trilogy is the lead partner and from that there has been a few very important models of best practice as a local government sector we have it has enabled us to support the clustering the science and technology cluster in the county and the importance of that is that we're saying Kerry is a place where there's a hub of companies there's 60 companies in this they're hoping to grow to 110 by next year where involved in the area of science and technology so it's really saying Kerry now is a hub for science and technology people will be aware of the RDI which Kerry county council has supported would first go to private partner, Kerry county council is the public partner and the IT trilogy as the third level partner that's a really big project huge project that's underway and it's under construction at the moment for the county and again it's at the high end very high end of research and development and employment into the county and we believe will be absolutely transformative in our reputation as a county was it comfortable for a public body entering into that it wouldn't have been something that we would have said straight off yet you know partnering with the private body third level see a space where in again true projects like this project we've seen best practice right across the EU and seeing where they have transformed and this is rural economies through that tripartite type of partnership and that's what convinced us as Kerry county council and the elected members of Kerry county council that we would actually support this project that's a very good point and Meryl bring you in on that about the social enterprise and the business side and the way that we're working those standards are learning the best practice number one it can get other companies outside of Europe coming in saying this is a place I can do business but also it does it get us small as the companies may be up to a standard if they grow to a certain size they'll be able to compete outside their region or maybe outside their country I think I'll just pick up on Mora's point because at a European level and because within the university we've been a huge beneficiary of EU funding I think one of the projects that I'm currently leading on at the moment is looking at this area of social entrepreneurship in structurally weak areas so that's exactly what we're doing Jerry is where we're also because a lot of the requirements of that funding is that you're adding to knowledge but you're doing it in partnership with stakeholders and I think that's been a fantastic model of research funding and the requirements of funding because you have to explore ideas but you also have to see do those ideas work in practice and we only get that opportunity when we work with other stakeholders who begin to either give us a demonstration of best practice or test out the ideas and a lot of the horizon funding in more recent years has been specifically at that so it's forcing people who don't normally work together or who haven't that experience actually to find partnerships and so this has been a big picture you can learn from each other of course you can learn from each other in a school today in a brain on school and killed off and at the moment they're doing the Erasmus program they have students from 6 or 7 different countries and the students themselves said to me there's Latvians, Croatians Spanish, Greek and Italians and they said the Latvians are the best English speakers and one of the students said because they do English twice a day every day in their primary schools and I said to the students they do languages no so you could see the difference the Croatians weren't great but that like learning that for the teachers even they can go back and say well maybe someday online do we start doing French or is it if you do it in your primary school you're up to speed way quicker like that you can learn from European partners and that can be by the business you know social enterprises across Europe I mean we learn from other partners where they have maybe established legal structures that there is a legal entity which is called a social enterprise does it work, does it develop the sector if they wish to scale up which is what you referred to how does that work public procurement how does the public procurement work in different European states and how could that influence will we engage with public procurement if we wish to support this kind of initiative by the service and that's a really strong directive at a European level is that these type of partnerships and this type of shared knowledge and putting it into practice is very important and the two most recent projects that I've been working on that's exactly what we do we have partners who are universities partners who are businesses and social enterprises on the ground and so we have a regular reality check as well all right with that we're going to open it to the floor it's about 7.35 so we're going to spend next 25 minutes or so getting observations or questions from the floor that we don't have all the answers up here but we'll do our best directive as best I can at anyone who wants to jump in here Michael, Mary or Mara does anyone want to have a word we have a microphone here as well I think it's going to be passed around so anyone want to say something at the back there is that Cleo thanks very much Jerry first of all thanks to the institute for having this event I attended a similar event in Watford maybe 18 months ago and one of the people on the panel was the then senator Greysaw Sullivan from the Green Party who is now one of the MEPs who's beaming into Michael's committee room in Dublin so I think it's a great event and it's a great opportunity to talk I just want to say something about Grow Remote because you've talked about social enterprise but the number of large companies that are now allowing their employees to work from home and if they can work from home they can work from anywhere and if they can work from anywhere let's have them in Simeon, Canmar and Valencia Island and so forth so that is also something that's happening I don't know if there's a way in which anything that's happening in Europe can support that or through the council support that it is nice that Grow Remote which is a voluntary organization set up last year won a social enterprise award last night so they will be doing a little bit more work than what they have been doing but it is something that really would help to bring younger people back into communities and one of the things I'm seeing about communities is that there's funding there for communities but if they're not organized and if they don't have energetic people driving them forward and filling up those god-awful grant application forms that take days that's what's needed and I think there is some space for the remote working trend to help rural Ireland in that respect so I don't know if you want to address that Mary, I'm going to put that to you first on that idea of living and working in a rural county no matter where your company is based I think we have some great examples like the Ludgate Hub and also the Dingle Hub as well which is a really good example of where you have an organization which is a social enterprise it's an after-profit it's a perfect example of where you're bringing private, corporate, community all those different assets which is a good approach for rural development which is asset-based, local place-based development who come together and have some very serious business operating out of it and is serving to regenerate rural areas so I think there's a lot more scope to development in rural areas which is concurred with the Grow Remote initiative as well if I could ask you a couple of years ago in Sneem, the Enterprise Committee down there they did a skilled survey of the area, who lives here what did they do, what skills did they have and if on a lot of foreign speakers and through that work then a major international company came instead of a call centre still operating is that an example of what Cleo was talking about in an organized self-starting they came up with that and look what happened as a result it's a very good example and I think an awful lot of work has been done and has been done in the county today I suppose the Grow Remote it's a huge part for rural county like ourselves it's an obvious one and that's why we're very supportive of it I suppose if you take the first tranche of the town and village that came in we made a definite decision as Kerry County Council we were used here to support the development of Enterprise development in our villages we've also supported the hard infrastructure since but from that we have put very significant funding into the delivery of the Sneem Hub which is there it is up and running and people working very very hard at this stage to bring about a strong activity in the Sneem one I was down with the Dingle one we put Town and Village funding into today and there has been a whole lot of other funding including Udras have gone into the Dingle Hub and it's absolutely a hub of activity high-end activity in a rural area the focus and the pure focus is about building local resilience looking at low carbon society at this stage there are 30 people employed directly there indirectly there's many many more I think it's nearly up at 60 outside of even the jobs they're supporting and the impact and they've had a very significant impact on the Nenra and the numbers going into the Nenra because of the age group of the people coming back is that the capacity to build local capacity and that's what it's all about so you know again about education programs and community and talking very much about a low carbon society in a community way so it's great to see the work that's going on there and the companies that are growing from it we've co-working space in Castle Island which was something you know really felt was a very important initiative in Castle Island and then we've seen, you've probably seen the report in the last week that HQ Tralee has been the highest performing hub in any place in the country I think country between 10 and a half million I think it was to the local economy they're also enlist all HQ so you know I think that makes and Karsevina shouldn't forget Karsevina either and there's the local co-working hub there as well so and Village Island is another one that that's growing at the moment in huge interest and huge buy-in and it's being led by Leonard Habs so like when you see these models and how they can help a county like Kerry and we're not alone in this you know we see them right up by the western coast you know they're really very good models and when we don't have the broadband to every house you know they can be very important centers and places for people to come but even what they were saying to me today in Dingle is that even people who can work remotely, an awful lot of people are coming in and using even the hot desking facilities that are there because it allows them to meet people to collaborate to cross good ideas and I suppose to meet people as well you know so people with really good sets of skills that have a transferability into other areas of life as well okay, next question anyone else this man in the front here Limri I was just saying I'll give my own example of having bought a property in 2001 in a broth no, that is devalued by about 30% in 17 years it wasn't my expectation I thought I'd be going to be a pension fund I was in with my auctioneer and he said I need a house I need a town house as villagers we are 25 minutes from Limri City now I'm just wondering if that's happening in broth what's happening in the rest of areas that are much fonder out and I would see most of the villages around me broth would be kind of a town but they're all sort of closed down no post office no shop no nothing now that's happening I would imagine I would actually be my job would often take me up to the midlands there where you would see towns with a lot of derelict sites they're going to get more derelict they won't be improving and so what's going to happen in rural Ireland with the towns and villagers if they're not right back to life again and definitely now broth isn't the worst town there's plenty of activity there but as you go further and further out there are towns and villages but I think that's a huge issue and if the towns and villages are left out because it's interesting I was in America and you know if you travel around there you'd have a walnuts outside the town and a deserted town in the middle and I've seen it witnessed it I remember one time I walked down and there was a courthouse and there was all these beautiful shop fronts and it was a tournée-et-la a tournée-et-la because there was a courthouse there so that's my point and I just think it's an important issue Michael I'll address that to you that example of broth 25 miles outside Limerick is that an example of the lack of balanced regional planning and development we have we have a Dublin we're all talking about the problems in rural Ireland but they've got big problems in Dublin at the moment you can't rent anywhere, young people are leaving not because they can't get a job why isn't Limerick why isn't broth feeding Limerick and be kept alive by the fact that it's that close to what should be a major city Well Jory, the real stories and the real things that happen would explain to how bad the situation actually is a couple of years ago a friend of mine a young man was fortunate enough to be called to the Guards he did his time passed out and was stationed in Dublin when he landed in Dublin he was unto me, Michael, he said if I don't get out of here I can't afford to be a guard in Dublin and very sadly I did everything I could trying to keep him cool and calm because all I was thinking was look if we could just stay there for a few years you'll go down the country eventually and you've taught the years to do you're a young healthy man please guide me, I'll have a pension and you'll be out of the gap and one day he rang me and he said I can't afford to be a guard in Dublin and sure enough he left his job in the Guards and came back to Kerry and gave up his job because he couldn't afford to live in Dublin like that was extremely sad but that is what people are faced with and as long as we keep ignoring the fact that whether it's the Trelees or whether it's the Hobbins neem or just the fact that you can live on a lot less of a salary and a lot less of a wage than what you need if you're living in the Carks or the Limericks or the Dublin so that's why when I see so much investment the other day there was 117 cranes standing above in Dublin 117 that was more than what was standing there at the height of the womb so Dublin is going to fall into the sea there's such a weight of concentration there at the moment and at the same time it's so disproportionate but having said that not to have it all be negative I mean Tourine Cahill the school out in Tourine Cahill closed down a local group came together a number of years ago and they said right we're not going to leave this building fall into the ground and today they were celebrating they're a finalist in a national award and they have all different types of activities going on in the school so rural communities can fight back but it's like the story about and where Wal-Mart was outside and the city inside was impoverished and falling down that there was no investment inside that we've tested like that too it's called Tralee for example unfortunately the centre of Tralee town is for sale Tralee is for sale if we had enough money if we wanted to come in we could buy Tralee today because every second building is for sale and that's a shame because what we should be doing is every one of those buildings before you look at building anything outside or at Kilgarvan or any of these places before you go building or scraping wouldn't be the green grass off the ground you should be going along and you should be looking at all the existing buildings that are there and whether it's overhead you could put accommodation family houses whatever businesses downstairs small units rental units and you could do it at affordable money you could buy them at affordable money like we've so much common sense things that we should be doing and it's like Cleo's point about the remote working and all of that of course that's brilliant but like we have enough in rural areas should be part of the answer B and Mary will ask you maybe just jump in anyone who wants to jump in decentralisation has been talked about again for an area like let's say brotha as an example the last time it was done in all the wrong ways even though there was some success stories with the legal aid board in Carstavine that's working well in a couple of places in Wexford doing well but almost in spite of how badly an elder talking about targeting and if you're in a government office and you don't physically have to be in Dublin can the government move things and the private sector will follow and add it then to grow remote and communities trying to help themselves as well to regenerate places Well unfortunately what happened with decentralisation we may as well call it speed as speed the word decentralisation it was associated with just one political party and for all the wrong reasons it was just a political we'll call it a stroke to win votes and to win elections and that's what people associated but we should get away from that now if it's done right and if it's done in a proper way and it alleviates Dublin exactly even since 2011 the difference if it was nothing else but the traffic going into Dublin early in the morning now 10 years ago it's frightening the places it's chalky up in itself and it's not a nice place to get into Mary just for roughly when we'll even to follow on from the point the economic the ESRI in 2018 produced a really interesting report which was looking at the imbalanced structure that we have in Ireland of our growth and had projections which really said if we continue to develop with the way we're developing it's an unsustainable model so of course the argument is to move things out to the regions and one of the interesting concepts that they introduced in that was the idea of developing second tier cities and that's coming from a lot of research that's been done by ESPON which is kind of an observatory across Europe that looked at second tier cities the capital city but where investment was going into them to develop the infrastructure to create housing opportunities public sector job creation as well as private sector job creation and they demonstrated very clearly that they were more resilient during the economic crisis so there's a lot of evidence there in terms of developing second tier cities which can also support rural areas so I think we have to kind of have a look at it develop these in the regions so that it takes the pressure that's currently happening in Dublin but also utilises the skill base that's developed in conjunction with the regions as well so I think we have to have a broader it's not just one solution there's a man at the back there I think looking to speak we've got 10, 12 minutes left so Hi my name is Adam Coleman I'm CEO of a company called HR Locker and we are a software company that are based in the Hinch and County Claire we serve about 55 different countries and there's 17 of us actually working in Claire what I'd like to make the point of is that if you look at the fantastic job that tourism Ireland did in the the Wild Atlantic way if something similar was done in terms of the Wild Atlantic way in terms of places to work and companies and if they were to do a programme and companies that are doing well and why they're doing well along that area there's a scatter them in Kerry, in Claire Donegal, everywhere there's lots of money being spent by the government on basically overseas companies being brought in subsidies for employment and all sorts of stuff and Enterprise Ireland prefer to be doing their best but I think that comes to a situation if they do want people and companies to actually relocate remote working, we're also a chapter of remote working in Claire as well by the way but if they do want them to and they do want to change that balance all they have to do is to put a little bit more investment in the Irish indigenous companies that are doing well and if they at least match the money that the Googles and all these people are getting in order to actually employ people through we'll end up creating real jobs that will stay in Ireland and will actually enrich the area so if there was somebody who come there would be something that would sort of talk about the tech while the glantic way or the business while the glantic way because people are moving my workforce of 18 people basically are from all over the place most of them are either older people who are coming back into the workplace or people who can't afford jobs or can't afford houses in Dublin and they're quite happy to move if the jobs are there but we need help and not a massive amount of help but I think more promotional help but not to individual companies through a region or a place Marmel, I'll put that to you that's something Kerry is trying to do sell itself, come and live and work here I suppose I'd say two things about the western corridor there's a government initiative called the Atlantic Economic Corridor and it goes from Donegal to Kerry and what it does is exactly is to take the companies that the indigenous companies and the FDI companies right along the wild Atlantic way to say this is the type of activity that's happening along the wild Atlantic way the other thing that's happening there is that there's a number of hubs as we talked about the hubs that want to be all about the hubs and what it is is that they will all come under one I suppose kind of umbrella they'll all be their own separate entity if somebody wants to do something they may be referred from one hub to the other or if they want to if they're travelling along the way they can be referred from one to another depending on the specializations so there's a lot of planning going on as an economic corridor it's in place about a year there has been the western development commission which I suppose we're not a part of which is a concern for me has been given a lot of funding to promote and market this Atlantic economic corridor so I suppose with a carry in a very carry hat on me it's very important for me that we're as much part of that marketing promotion as maybe Claire who is part of it would be so definitely like I take the point I think it's hugely important and that's one of the things we've we've been in constant discussions we've been in constant working with the private sector around how do we raise the profile even in a carry context to say this is a great place to do business and I suppose that's why I talked earlier things like the cluster about we've an invest in carry program going at the moment which we did as carry council with the idea which has been pushed out right across internationally and that as well so I suppose it's very important that people know that we're when you come here you know we have the tourism industry and hugely important to us hugely hugely important to us as an industry and that we also have the kind of high end companies and you know as well I suppose the other thing we do we are fortunate that we have some of our bigger companies the likes of the FISCOs the JRI Americas we have the Liebers who are very very outspoken and very much promote the county you know we even had mentioned the hundreds of embassies we had two embassy visits here very recently and even the German embassy were in Trilly recently for assigning between the German Ireland Chamber of Commerce and the Trilly Chamber of Commerce and they signed a memorandum of understanding together to increase trade between the two areas and again you know I think to have those big companies in the county coming to that presentation and talking about the county and talking about how they can thrive and how they can you know grow in what would be perceived to be a very rural county and you know I think to you know there are things that the message needs to get out there maybe it's very important to message those does anyone else have a final question man at the back there yeah I'll get to a few very quickly yes somebody going to school might have remembered this he'll fares the land to Hairston he'll supply for a wealthy cumulates and men decay princes and lords may flourish or may fade a bread can make them as a bread had made but a proud peasantry, a country's pride which once destroyed can never be supplied and that's exactly what is happening here after the after the disman rebellion they said you couldn't hear the call of a plowman in Munster of the lowering of a cow we we got to get it again and we rose up from it you come along then to the famine everybody had four or five acres enough to pay the landlords his rent based on the pig that was inside of the kitchen with them you come along then and we got our freedom and before that even we dashed one in the winter max the farmers got a right to their own farms and we were all the time improving and we continued to improve even when we got our independence and I can remember I'm from North Kerry I remember by and from the harbour booming villages when the people the local people were going to the creamers doing their shopping locally and supporting the whole structure now since the EU has come in that has all changed and the only option seems to be industry but what's going to happen to the people that were still prepared to stay on the land the people that could go out there and in one glance see what was wrong with one of them if you ask them how did you know might be the way his ear was turned might be the way he's holding his tail it could be the look in his eye but you could tell you sent for the vet figured out the rest then for you that sort of expertise is disappearing down the swanee just like the small farmers are disappearing down the swanee and you can talk about corporations we now discuss this to be of little importance if there are no people in Northern Ireland ok thanks very much Michael I suppose that in the European context that brings us to the common agricultural policy now we are short of time but just that policy and what it's doing to rural Ireland where you think it should go it's going to be heavily focused on the environment next time round there'll be less money particularly with Britain being gone to go around in terms of subsidies and payments does it need to be changed the biggest challenge that we have in farming over the next 5, 10, 15 years is the survival of the small family of arams and when we had nothing as this man rightly pointed out when we had nothing in Ireland we had small family of arams they were the backbone of our economy and everybody knows how passionate I am about this I hate to see politicians forgetting where we came from because if you forget where we came from you don't know where we're going I really want to see our small family farm survive I really see it as a big challenge because there was one time and it's not that awful long ago when we were growing up if a person had 20 cows there were big operators now if a person has 20 cows you say like it's not sustainable as a model for a young person to try and make a living out of it if they were going to take you over the farm I don't want to see it being a handicap for a young person to be handed a farm I want them to be able to look at it and say yes I can make money out of this whether it's a part-time living or a full-time living but they can see the positive side of it is it going to be part-time should that be the way your funds the model to say can help you get another job as well so you stay on the land I'm a realist jury and the majority of the people that I represent for them to try and make a full-time living out of their farms at the moment is extremely difficult and especially for the younger generation who mightn't be able to make do with as little maybe as their parents or their grandparents did they are going to be looking at it and saying okay I'm glad to have the farm at home but I need to have this other work to try and mix it up and those jobs will have to be local exactly but can I just make one point and I'd love it if we can bring in if we are able to bring in a couple more questions because the people are after the amount but just one point about regional growth there is one idea that I have in my head that really bothers me a lot they're talking about spending literally billions above in Dublin Airport and at the moment there isn't a rail track literally out to Dublin Airport but they're talking about spending billions out there what would make a way more sense to me would be if you took will say Shannon Airport an airport that's an excellent facility and completely underutilized and if you put a bullet train we have them around the rest of Europe why can't we have one in Ireland connecting Shannon with Dublin and if you had a bullet train that you could literally go from the west to the east in like 30 it would transfer Ireland it would make it a way more practical like you could have people travelling to Dublin maybe to work or travelling from Dublin to Shannon to the west to work it would just make such it would balance us Any other questions? Yes this man here I'll come to you next Young people leaving rural Ireland has been going on for decades I'd like to ask the panel are they optimistic that that can be changed and why are they optimistic? OK Mary I'll ask you that first optimistic would you be optimistic to keep more young people in rural Ireland? Well you know I'm from a rural area I rare my family in a rural area but I look at my three daughters and I think that they have a mixed view on whether they want to stay in a rural area whether they want to go get employment three things that generally push us out of rural areas is either we can't get a job we don't have a good quality of life or we can't access services so I think if we're going to try and address that then we need to recognise that that's the way we have to try and meet the needs in rural areas and there's nothing wrong with someone going away and coming back because when you come back you come back with different ideas a different perspective so I think we have to be flexible about how we think we manage our youth or how we create opportunities for them to come back and I think just to the speaker who was talking about you know, grow remote and creating opportunities and promoting what they do one of the conversations that I had most recently with someone who was working in a digital hub who was quite young she'd set up her own business had lived in Cork decided to move to West Cork to be part of this and a question that was directed at her is okay so as you grow you're successful so we have this equation that you're successful if you grow and get bigger will you then have to move your business to Dublin and she said no no and there for a quality of life success to me is actually getting better contracts and having more people come and live where we are so I think we have to maybe have a different perspective on what constitutes grow what constitutes success and then we look at the opportunities creating them for young people to stay in the rural areas but I think we have to have a little bit of be open minded about it yes very briefly of course everyone else is gone when you get to that stage but I think people go through stages in their life as well and maybe we have to look at that okay this lady at the front here just sorry to microphone sorry it's just pretty much in the sense that gentlemen was talking it's my feeling at times it still is like EU or Dublin or whoever academia bringing what rural are on what remote areas should be like and the feelings are very good the thoughts are very good and many things work but very very often what is life there what life there could thrive and thrive better to get to a very very concrete aspect schools losing teachers it's fine for school to have three teachers in a small community to have two teachers it's very very complicated okay it's great for kids to have three teachers it's much better to have a school of 45 50 kids instead of one class with 50 kids like in Dublin where the kids not respected nor learned to but there's no room for that and there's no room for that and nobody really listens to that as an issue for the quality of life of young families that have young kids that wish to stay there that wish to offer a good education a room where each kid is listened to it has to do with the way its community is structured and I think at times as well what could people develop that it's slightly different at times from a more standard more standardized kind of company and so on so I think to listen more it's more democratic and it really helps European Union Dublin to be more sharing instead of just a center that doesn't really listen to the what about that point what I'll come to like about maybe the European Union on a larger scale and the government listening better to people in rural Ireland about what they actually want I suppose I see him and probably know a lot more now than I would about this but I'll chance it I suppose we talked about the European Union and the leader funding and the models of leader and I suppose a very important part of the leader and I suppose we all became very expert in the last few years in local government because it's a new area for us was that the whole idea of the community planning and that the strategies are driven from the people and they're driven up and I think that's one of the very good things that have really really come from the whole membership of the European Union around community and if I look at a few things you know that the social inclusion funding for example you know like rural isolation is a big issue for us in Kerry we know it is we've been aging among the most aged populations ourselves in Mayo hold the price on that score and yet if you look at the initiative like the men's sheds you know I know that people say there should be women's sheds as well and all that but if you just take the men's sheds as they are you're bringing an awful lot of older men together to do skills and to do things that give great benefit back to the community I think fantastic schemes that have come from the bottom up one of the requirements that one of the things we've been asked to do as the lag or the body who gives out the funding or looks at the funding and plans for the county in relation to the leader funding has been extending that to outreach so that you go further into the rural areas for those people who can't get to the sheds those many you know who are very very isolated and about bringing those in so I think that's just an example Aimen runs a fantastic food share program again European I think there's some element of the leader funding European funding again again you talk about it's a really strong social enterprise that benefits everyone and again it's very much aimed at you know the social inclusion part of the county so there's an awful lot of really good initiatives the social farming initiative that South Cary Development Partnership you know where you're bringing people with intellectual disabilities if that's the correct word to work in in farms and we've seen a huge success of this and we've now seen UCC coming in to provide a qualification around that for the participants and it has really been a really successful model which has benefited everybody involved and it's a model that has been rolled out across the county and ultimately I've no doubt the country so again these are very much from the bottom up and they're coming from the community up and I think leader has been a very important one and if you take the county like Kerry we have a huge strong PPN public participation network we've 660 organisations affiliated to that that's really really strong and each of those are you know really part of the community fabric and again very much part of all of that as both structured and the way we make decisions in the county and I don't think that that whole bottom up is necessarily one final question Eamon, yes Thanks very much Jerry look obviously the EU has come back to the overall subject the EU has been very beneficial and you've talked about the funding, the development and also I think Myra mentioned the participation as well and even what we're doing today I think is really strong from Europe that everybody has a voice but we're a net contributor as a country now so I think we have to look at it differently and Myra mentioned that about Horizon 2020 and those different projects and I think life is another one that the council have applied for and Duhallo have applied for in the past and we're looking for one now as well but what role for the EU so I think we have a fantastic panel here in relation to this and it's the social clause that Jerry you mentioned laws being transposed from Europe into Ireland and the new social clauses that are now transposed they're not just around the social enterprises I think Mary you might know a bit more than me about this but it's also when public sector contracts are procured and that's why I suppose when Myra you're here with the procurement office and Michael you're an expert I'm winning public sector contracts from what I know as well so we have a good I think we have a real opportunity here to see how public sector contracts potentially can be availed of by community organizations and when people apply for them even private sector that they have social clause they understand that they have to employ people locally as well it's a huge opportunity and maybe the panel might be able to respond to how we can unlock the potential in rural areas to avail of the public sector contracts Mary I'll get you to come in on that one maybe just on that side of it very quickly I think it was partially in response to the European Commission and it's social business initiative that there was this reorganization regarding the public procurement and one of the essential elements with regards to social enterprises is that they have also advocated that the contracts are smaller they're broken up so that it does allow for not all the big companies small businesses and in other countries in terms of learning what's happening in Europe in Italy because they would have been a little bit more progressive in terms of developing social cooperatives is that they have a particular procurement policy that they have to have a profile of people who are local who are maybe more disadvantaged who are coming from other areas of social exclusion and that they're providing services that the community needs as well so we can learn a lot from where other countries have maybe had more advantage in terms of public procurement as well okay look, firstly we're out of time I hope I got as many people as I could but we'll probably have to another one of these nights maybe if the IEA want to come down again but I want to thank everybody for coming it was a great turnout and thanks for giving your input and your views as well and my thanks to our brilliant panel as well you give them a round of applause please so thanks very much and safe home to everybody