Mr. Conor Rowley:

Yes, that funding has stopped. A considerable amount of money has gone into the children and youth section, into certain locations and certain parts. It has not had an equitable spread across the country.

The thinking around QCBI was to harness the things we have learned from the prevention and early intervention programmes, through very high-end research, very interesting community and voluntary services, learning about interventions and showcasing that, and try to bring it back to the system rather than continue to create parallel systems. That is where we are with the QCBI. It focuses on four areas: data; evidence knowledge; training capacity; and quality. It might seem as though we have taken a long time developing it but we have not been sitting on our hands. It has undergone a very thorough-going design process. It is different from the usual projects that are approved under the Dormant Accounts Fund. It should be recognised that the complexity of some of the projects require more design and development time. They are not shovel ready.

Regarding consultation on this, we have had EU peer review from ten member states, from the Commission stakeholders in Ireland. We have an open policy debate on it. Our Minister has been very involved and we have international experts. In addition, we have consulted and have input from 85 of our key structures and key groupings through the national advisory council for children and young people, the national steering group for young people service committees and so on.