Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

On the two questions about the Programme for Peace and Reconciliation, it was a new part of the Vote for 2017. The PEACE IV programme is a cross-Border initiative funded by the EU, the Irish Government and the Northern Ireland Assembly and is managed by a special EU programme body. That is a general response to the first part of the Chairman's question. On the second part, virtually every time we have discussions in Cabinet regarding Brexit the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade is very keen to emphasise that in our negotiations on Brexit the resources for the Programme for Peace and Reconciliation will be maintained. To the extent that we are moving positively in the negotiation on all the elements, that is right up there in the negotiations.

On the Dormant Account Fund, the increase is attributable to new projects coming on stream, in particular crime intervention and peer support adoption. There are others. In addition, there is what we call the quality capacity building initiative or, effectively, the initiative we have been developing over the last year or two to mainstream lessons learned in the prevention and early intervention work and the investment of Atlantic Philanthropies over the last decade. This is to ensure that those lessons become part of the system for ongoing training and mentoring on what we have learned for our current and future professional workforce, in terms of pulling together much of the data on the programmes that work into one place and one website. That is one aspect of it. We also are using the moneys for a youth employability initiative, the Big Brother Big Sister programme. The increase in the Dormant Account Fund is responsible for a number of programmes.