While the experts are getting on with put ting together a national plan to take us into the next millennium, many groups in rural Ireland are getting on with their own projects. Since the mid-1990s when the EU's Leader programme was introduced as part of the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy by Ray MacSharry, the programme has achieved remarkable success. Use is also being made of local development programmes.
Many believe this is because the initiatives have come from the "bottom up" rather than having been imposed. It was introduced as a pilot programme and from the original 16 groups, the scheme was expanded to cover the State.
The most visible signs of the programme can normally be found in rural villages where Leader funding helped to build resource and interpretative centres but it also supported many other developments which are not high profile.
Recently, the Longford Community Resources Ltd, which administers the Leader programme and the local development programme, published its annual report for last year and it makes very interesting reading.
Out of a Leader budget of £1.9 million, the organisation had committed all but £60,000 to projects throughout the county in the period under review.
In all, 193 projects had received funding and of these, 108 were community-based, 66 were private and 19 had county-wide application.
In addition, the community resources were awarded £1.4 million by area development management on December 1996 for a three-year period under the local development programme.
This programme aimed to tackle long-term unemployment and social exclusion experienced by specific groups such as the long-term unemployed, disabled people, Travellers, disadvantaged women, lone parents and rural smallholders.
As a result of the injection of funds, 250 people had found employment and the company administering the scheme employed 12 staff.
The programme in 1998 addressed several innovative initiatives including the rural resource scheme to assist the smallholder, and the community enhancement scheme to produce village and town enhancement plans for five towns and 11 villages in the county.
In addition, the schemes assisted in setting up five homework clubs and the provision of a community computer training course in the rural communities providing accessible new skills in information technology.
In all, 18 per cent of the Leader programme money went to rural tourism. Nine per cent of the money went to small firms, crafts and local services.
A further 24 per cent was spent on the environment and living conditions and only 1 per cent on agriculture, fisheries and forestry.
Training and recruitment assistance accounted for 14 per cent of the expenditure and 6 per cent on technical assistance. Only 9 per cent was spent on administration.
In the past few weeks, the local newspapers have published details of where the money was spent and to which projects it was allocated.
This varied from the purchase of boats by individuals for angling tourism projects to marketing local town festivals, upgrading B & B facilities and the marketing and publishing of local historical books and the upgrading of creche facilities.
The local development programme money went on a wide range of projects such as the homework clubs, education support schemes, parenting programmes, a drugs survey in Long ford, arts programmes, a mobile information unit, an enterprise officer and the purchase of equipment for St Mel's training centre for Travellers in Longford.
Most of the local development programme money was spent on refurbishing community facilities, helping small businesses get off the ground and on education support programmes.
Training for women and grants were given for a number of studies in the area into the needs of disadvantaged people.
The areas covered by expenditure from both schemes were as diverse as grants for local beekeepers, a driving school, the production of an album of songs about the county and grants to community workers to train in rural development, social care, Montessori teaching and other community-related work.