Scottish Rural Communities Policy Review: stage 2 - Ireland case study

3. National and European Union rural development policy and support structures: building on a tradition of Community Led Local Development

Ireland has a strong tradition of voluntary activity and local community development, driven primarily by civil society organisations. Historically, this self-help tradition was in part a response to a national rural policy which was sectoral and delivered through regional agencies, with local government, county and city councils having limited responsibilities and budgets for rural development.

3.1 1930s-1980s

One of the most significant national community development movements, originating in the 1930s, is Muintir na Tíre (People of the Land) which promotes the social, economic and cultural development of rural localities through community council structures, which provide a proven mechanism for self-help and Community Led Local Development (CLLD) (Muintir Na Tíre, 2025). Currently there are 29,000 community-based organisations in operation across the country, with approximately 1 million active volunteers and an estimated economic value of more than €2 billion (Department of Rural and Community Development and the Gaeltacht, 2021).

O’Hara and Commins (1991) refer to the “starts and stops” in rural development policy in Ireland, suggesting that the efforts at integrated rural development and regional development of the 1960s were eclipsed by the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in the 1970s. They note that by the mid-1980s, rural and regional development policy themes had re-emerged against a backdrop of growing calls for CAP reforms and a greater commitment to European economic and social cohesion, through the principles of partnership and participation, particularly for remote, peripheral regions (O’Hara and Commins, 1991).

3.2 1980s - 1990s

The emergence of an emphasis on Community Led Local Development can be observed from the 1980s onwards, linked to the realisation that top-down, national policy-led approaches to the development of rural regions were largely ineffective and that a more endogenous, place-based approach, with an emphasis on local resources and the specific characteristics of human, cultural and social capital, could provide the fundamental conditions for long-term, sustainable rural development” (O’Malley (1992). This thinking stressed that ‘bottom up’ approaches are most effective when complemented by strong relationships and institutional links between local areas and their wider political, institutional, trading, and national environments. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) influential New Rural Paradigm, published in 2006, encapsulates much of this thinking (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2006). It emphasises the importance of local specificities and capacities, but also of integrating sectoral policies at regional and local levels and improving co-ordination between them by central government. It also emphasises the value of partnerships between the public, private and voluntary sectors in the development and implementation of local and regional policies (O’Shaughnessy and O’Hara, 2016).

The Irish government responded to this reorientation through new policies and programmes in Rural Development; most notably two Operational Programmes for agriculture (1991-93 and 1994-99) (European Commission and Directorate General for Regional Policies, 1994) and a pilot programme for Integrated Rural Development (IRD) (1988-90) (O’Malley, 1992). The latter served as a testing ground for a bottom-up approach to community led local rural development. The IRD pilot programme was administered by the Department of Agriculture and focussed on 12 sub-county areas in which a rural development co-ordinator was appointed to organise a core group of local community leaders. O’Malley’s (1992, p.9) evaluation of the pilot concluded that it became ‘evident that there were certain projects which can be initiated more effectively through the process of co-ordinating and linking up of people’. This in effect paved the way for the Irish government’s continued commitment to community partnership and participation in securing rural community development.

In 1991, the Irish government implemented two significant programmes which have contributed to mobilising CLLD; the Programme for Social and Economic Progress (PESP) and the European Union LEADER pilot initiative in 1991 (Oireachtas, 1991). Under the PESP, twelve local partnership companies were established and tasked with tackling social exclusion. Four of these companies were in rural areas and were continued under a subsequent Operational Programme for Local Urban and Rural Development (1994-99) (European Commission and Directorate General for Regional Policies, 1994). The European Union’s LEADER pilot programme was initiated in 1991 with a stated purpose to support locally based development in rural areas through the establishment of a network of local development action groups (O’Hara and Commins, 1991). LEADER 1 (1991-1994) derived monies from EU Structural Funds, made available through Ireland’s Department of Agriculture, Food & Forestry to 16 rural development groups. LEADER 1 covered 61% of Ireland’s land area and 30% of the total population, with an average population density of 25 persons per km (National Economic and Social Council, 1994).

By 1994, the National Social and Economic Council (NESC) published their report ‘New Approaches to Rural Development’ which recommended three key rural development (Ireland) policy elements:

1. pre-development which entailed the animation of local groups and generation of a capacity to work purposefully in collective action,

2. reduction of social exclusion and

3. enterprise development (National Economic and Social Council, 1994).

Additionally, the NESC report emphasised the value of Area Based Partnerships, describing these partnerships as capable of providing a procedural and institutional framework for supporting self-interest collective action and contributing to the achievement of public (rural development) policy objectives. This NESC report outlined a number of guiding principles for rural and community/local development organisations including area-based partnerships of state, voluntary, local and community groups, strong vertical links from local partnerships to national agencies, and capacity building of local groups to participate effectively in partnerships for development (NESC, 1994). At this time, local government authorities in Ireland had relatively few powers. The limited presence and power of local government, particularly at a sub-county level, is said to have provided an opportunity for the emergence of locally based approaches to addressing socio-economic problems and an associated range of multi-level governance arrangements. The administrative and funding requirements of EU programmes, which required decentralisation and partnership-working combined with local volunteerism and community leadership, meant that civil society organisations assumed a lead role in the formation of local development structures (O’Shaughnessy & O’Hara, 2015).