IRD Duhallow

By Susan Lynch

Local Development Consultant

Context

IRD Duhallow is a community-based integrated rural development (IRD) company that was established in 1989.

The organisation emerged from the local development efforts of community activists and local entrepreneurs in the 1960’s and ’70’s. The company's main objectives are the creation of sustainable jobs through environmentally friendly development of the resources within Duhallow and to seek to assist the continuing social and economic development of the area. From the start it has been a partnership of the local private sector, the dairy co-operatives, the public sector and the local community. In 1991 a full-time Manager was appointed and IRD Duhallow successfully applied for LEADER I funding. The company subsequently got funding from EUROFORM and were approved forDuhallow is a largely rural, inland area located in the South West of Ireland (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Location of Duhallow

IRD Duhallow’s catchment area covers the North West of County Cork and parts of East Kerry. The geographical area is over 1300km2, with a population of 30,000. Population decline is a major problem, the total population of the region has almost halved in the past 100 years. Despite the national trend towards in-migration in the 1990’s, Duhallow’s population has continued to decline; between 1986 and 1996 Duhallow’s population fell by 6.9% compared to a national rise of 3.1%.

Agriculture is the most important economic sector in Duhallow, but has declined very considerably in recent years. Almost one-third of the workforce is directly engaged in agriculture at present and the vast majority of local industries depend on agriculture for raw materials.

Apart from a small amount of public service employment, which accounts for only 4% of the workforce, service employment in Duhallow is mainly in retailing. The area has a small tourist industry with an estimated 15,000 visitors per annum.

There is a well-established manufacturing base, which is largely low technology, but recently there has been a higher dependency for employment on a small anddecreasing number of large firms.

Description of action

The Partnering Process in IRD Duhallow

There is good participation by all sectors in the decision making process of IRD Duhallow. The constitution of the Board of Management has always been decided by the Board itself. In 1996 the Social Partners were added to the sectors from which the organisation draws the members of its Board of Management at the suggestion of ADM2.

The other major change from the original structure was that as a result of the findings of the ex-post evaluation of the LEADER I Initiative IRD Duhallow decided that the Board of Management was not sufficiently geographically representative. The company therefore decided to split the area into three regions and set up a Community Forum in each region. These fora consist of two representatives of each community group in the region. They meet quarterly and form an important part of IRD Duhallow’s local consultation and capacity building process.

Each of the Fora elects two representatives onto the Board of Management each year. The structure of the Board of Management is shown in Figure 2.

The Board members representing the public sector are mainly at Area Manager level apart from the two County Councillors. The Teagasc representative has changed from time to time over the last ten years but is normally an Education Officer or a local Advisor. The Social Partner Representatives are prominent local activists in their organisations and the Private Sector representatives are mainly successful local people with their own businesses.

The Board concentrates on Strategic Planning, Policy Development, Budgeting, and Monitoring with the executive having responsibility for the management of operations. An annual review is undertaken each year for IRD Duhallow by an independent evaluator and the findings of this contribute to an annual Board Training and Strategic Planning Session.

In order to ensure that as broad a selection of local people as possible are included in the decision making process the Board of Directors has recently established ten thematic working groups, each having a membership specific to its brief, and each in a position to deliver strategy across a range of programmes in line with local needs.

Figure 2: IRD Duhallow Board Membership

Figure 3: Working Group Structure

Each group is chaired by a member of the Board of Directors, and draws its membership not just from the Board, but also involves people with particular expertise or interest in the theme. These members come from community groups, local organisations, farmers representatives, the business sector, beneficiaries, socially excluded sectors and statutory bodies. Each working group reports directly to the Board at least quarterly.

IRD Duhallow has been built on a partnership approach to local development. Community activism has always been strong in the Duhallow region and IRD Duhallow has successfully valorised this base, through animation and capacity-building measures.

The Local Development Programme (1996-1999) has facilitated the organisation to develop its structures, thereby enabling greater participation by disadvantaged groups. The commitment of local businesses to supporting the organisation is a tremendous asset. The Duhallow business community has provided professional advice to the organisation, and supports many development initiatives, bothfinancially and otherwise. Eleven statutory bodies are represented on the Board and / or Working Groups, and all have partnered IRD Duhallow in the delivery of various initiatives. Moreover, the organisational structures provides for active participation at all levels, so that meaningful local partnership between the community, statutory, and social partner sectors is achieved.

IRD Duhallow’s approach to development is based on identifying local needs and responding to them through whatever programmes or resources can be accessed. Programmes such as LEADER and the Local Development Programme have been delivered directly through IRD Duhallow, while in other cases; IRD Duhallow has played the role of a co-ordinating body, with the resources or services being delivered through a mainstream agency.

During 2000-2001, IRD Duhallow delivered nine different programmes in the area. The integrated approach to rural development applied by IRD Duhallow has seen a huge degree of complementarity and synergy between LEADER, the Local Development Programme and other initiatives. As a result, a moresustainable impact has been achieved, with social, economic and cultural gains for the areas. The overall funding administered by IRD Duhallow over the period 1991-2001 was approximately £10 millions (€15 millions). This came mostly from LEADER I and II (60%), the Local development Programme (23%) and FAS (10%).

2 ADM (Area Development Management Ltd) was set up as an independent funding and support

agency by Government for area based partnerships

Qualitative or quantifiable results

Outcomes

The presence on the Board of IRD Duhallow of representatives of the public sector encourages co-operationand co-ordination of the actions of existing public institutions. Some joint projects were developed e.g. involvement in the village renewal programme with the County Councils. It also stimulated thinking in the public sector about the way in which it operated its own programmes.

Local organisations were strengthened and a number of new community groups were formed. Co-operation with the Irish Countrywomen's Association was a particularly fruitful relationship, which commenced during LEADER I and was further developed in LEADER II. The vision of Duhallow as a region became more common due to the work of IRD Duhallow and this enhanced the overall integration of the area. The number of organised community groups has grown from 4 to 29 as a result of the Programme.

Creating awareness of the problems has stimulated change in the policies of public sector bodies. The public sector agencies are more inclined to have public consultations on their policies than was the case before the LEADER initiative. The partnership between the sectors experienced at Board level in organisations such as IRD Duhallow was an important element in changing the thinking of people employed in the State Sector. Those who were members of the IRD Duhallow Board were facilitated in working more constructively together through the activities of the Board including the Board Training and Strategic Planning and Evaluation sessions.

There are very few negative effects. There is a danger that IRD Duhallow might be perceived by local people as being able to solve all the local problems but this would not be possible, as it does not have sufficient funding or the remit to make much impact on major problems such as rural depopulation. It can, however, bring such problems to the attention of the State Sector bodies and the participation of the State Sector bodies on the Board and Strategic Working groups facilitates this.

Strong points

Successes

Key factors identified by Board members in the success of IRD Duhallow include:

  • Setting up an organisation that can handle any relevant problem.
  • A good balance of all sectors and geographic areas on the Board
  • Cohesiveness of the Board
  • A strong management and staff team
  • Building up the capacity of the Board and staff through regular training and self-evaluation.
  • A good relationship with the state sector.
  • The ability through the partnership process to act as a catalyst forchange in the State Sector organisations.
  • Increased confidence and capacity in local communities as a result of the LEADER and Local Development Programmes
  • The development of music, cultural and community facilities has increased community cohesion and improved the local infrastructure and the sense of local identity This has involved the participation of both the State and Private sectors
  • The development of small enterprises has achieved an equivalent level of job creation to that of a medium sized externally based industry located in Duhallow but is more sustainable.

Transferable factors/Processes

A number of the factors and processes that contributed to the success of the partnership in IRD Duhallow are transferable. One particularly important factor is that there is a good balance of all sectors on the Board. Many local development organisations have very little local private sector involvement and too high a dependency on a single public sector partner for matching funding.

There is a difficulty for many organisations in regard to public sector partnership in that for integrated programmes there are many potential public sector partners. If too many of these are represented on the Board of Management it can make the Board very unbalanced and diminish the willingness of the Community sector to play a full part in decision-making. This can be reduced if there are a number of strategic sub- committees or working groups to which the public sector bodies can contribute, as is the case in Duhallow. Many local problems need the involvement of a number of different interests in order to provide solutions. The local development organisation can play an important role in bringing together diverse interests such as agricultural organisations, local landowners, the community sector and the public sector to solve particular problems.

Another important process is animation and capacity buildingfollowed by encouragement to local communities and enterprises to promote projects themselves. A long term plan for local development is also necessary as can be seen from the success of IRD Duhallow when the whole ten year period since the beginning of LEADER I is considered. Results cannot be expected too quickly and there is long period of animation and learning how to do things before the full development process can begin. This is particularly necessary for areas with low community resources and capacity. The employment of staff to help build the capacity of community groups and disadvantaged individuals is an important element in achieving effective partnership between the sectors. In the case of IRD Duhallow - this has been facilitated by the Local Development and Social Inclusion Programmes. One of the successes of IRD Duhallow is the level of effective partnership between the sectors at Board of Management level. This has been achieved by selecting attractive venues for the Board Training and Planning sessions and by trying to ensure successful outcomes of these sessions by careful selection of facilitators and trainers. Over the past 4 years each of these Training and Planning sessions has had a specific focus e.g. the 2001 session had the aim of assessing the structures and mode of operandi which would lead to effective implementation of LEADER + and the Social inclusion Programme.

Example of innovative action

A specific action that gives a good example of effective partnership in action is an environmental project undertaken by three community groups in relatively disadvantaged areas with the help of animation andtechnical assistance from IRD Duhallow. The project was to develop three rivers for angling and tourism.

This involved restoring the banks, cleaning scrub, deepening pools, replacing rock, grading glens, fencing, and planting trees and the provision of stiles and foot bridges. The rivers were in a very scenic area but had become overgrown and neglected in recent years. The total cost of the development was £146,019.87 (approximately €220,240) and a LEADER grant of £63,486.90 (approximately €95,760) was given. An additional grant of £1,391.63 (approximately €2,100) was given to assist in the production of a brochure to market the area.

One of the most innovative aspects of the project was that it involved partnerships between three community groups, the local farmers alongthe rivers, the Regional Tourism Organisation, Cork County Council and the Southern Fisheries Board. Animation and facilitation had been undertaken by IRD Duhallow staff over a considerable period and a number of Board members from all sectors were of great help to the communities in planning the project with the communities, getting approval for the funding and in the implementation of the project. A high proportion of the matching funding came from voluntary labour.

The development of facilities for angling had been an important element in IRD Duhallow’s LEADER I plan as it was seen as a vital part of the Tourism Marketing strategy. It was not possible to put this strategy into practice due to problems in regard to ownership of fishing rights. The communities that were eventually involved had received animation and community development training in LEADER I and had promoted other local projects in LEADER I and LEADER II. This built their capacity and enabled them to undertake a more ambitious project. The formation of the South Eastern Regional CommunityForum wasa vital element in the process of developing the project as the Community Forum enables discussion on the local community needs and it was from these discussions together with lectures given by Cork County Council and attended by community group members that the project idea emerged. The relevant community groups received further animation, training and facilitation from IRD Duhallow staff during LEADER II and IRD Duhallow also had a brokerage role in assisting in getting the local landowners to co-operate in the project. They also assisted in contacts with the public sector organisations involved in theproject. IRD Duhallow’s Enterprise Working Group assisted the community groups in developing the business plan and in other technical aspects of the project. This project illustrates the ideal progression of participants in Local Development animation andcapacity building, training, successful application for funding and eventual project completion. This is only possible in a multi-dimensional integrated programme.

Failures

Weaknesses

  • A high dependency on EU and public sector funding resulting in a danger that IRD Duhallow’s activities might become Programme led.
  • High staff turnover particularly in positions where the work is difficult and requires working at unsocial times.
  • There is a challenge to get more people who suffer from disadvantage and social exclusion involved in the Sub-groups and Board.