Ms Sian Muldowney:

With regard to funding, I cannot think of the figures off the top of my head but the SICAP budget took a cut within the budget. Dublin has received a disproportionate cut compared to the rest of the country and the inner city has received a disproportionate cut compared to Dublin. We took a 38% cut in funding from March to December. In addition, in December we were informed that our first-quarter funding was cut by an additional 6.5%. It comes back to smaller organisations. If we win the tender and the funding remains at 38%, the vast majority of projects in the co-operative will have to close their doors. We will not be able to keep going. It is a catch-22 situation about how to proceed.

The administrative issue is a massive problem. It comes back to why tendering is bad for small groups. There used to be some leeway within the LCDP to allow people to spend a certain percentage of funding on administrative work. The way the new programme works, one is either in administration or not. I am a co-ordinator of a local community project and I do a lot of development work but I am also responsible for the administration. Under the new programme, I can no longer do both but must be either one or the other. That will have a massive consequence on small programmes because we do everything. That is how we keep the doors open. We wash, we clean, we paint, we run development work and we do administration. Within the co-operative, we are nowhere near 25% for most organisations. We did not receive enough in funding to be able to have a major administrative budget.

The Deputy referred to a loss of expertise. I know Mr. Tommy Coombes and Ms Rita Fagan, who are excellent voices for their communities. It refers to the non-financial value we referred to earlier. Decades of experience and knowledge has built up within communities and all of that will be lost. It is a unique way of being able to work and to know what works within communities. The approach that one size fits all does not work. What works in inner-city Dublin will not work in west Cork. There are different ways of doing things and private companies will not care about adapting their work in that way. That is not what they are about.