The Cavan-Monaghan Rural Development Committee has begun a legal challenge to restrictions placed by Minister for Rural Affairs Éamon Ó Cuív on tendering applications to a new EU rural development programme.
The Cavan-Monaghan Rural Development Committee says the Minister is breaching EU guidelines by restricting applications to tender for the Leader programme to newly-formed, county-based structures designed and funded by his own department.
The committee complained in August to the directorate general of agriculture and rural development in Brussels. Last week the complaint was passed on to the secretariat of the European Commission. The commission has a year to investigate whether the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs has infringed EU rules.
A spokesman for the committee said it was possible a court injunction would be sought to suspend the awarding of any contract if the department sought tenders to deliver the programme before the investigation was resolved.
"There are many companies like ours throughout the country that have been instructed to dissolve and leave their track record in rural development behind and fall in with a ministerial order," said Derek McCabe, chairman of Cavan-Monaghan Rural Development Society.
"This goes totally against the spirit and letter of the Leader philosophy that is based on building rural development from the ground up."