Paudie Coffey (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

All right.

I acknowledge the increase in funding that has been made available. I acknowledge also that this is a relatively new Department - only two years old - and that from a standing start the Minister has managed to increase the budget by over 26% in 2019 to a total of €291 million across the various programmes. This needs to be acknowledged because it is hard-fought-for with other Departments. This committee has a special interest in rural communities and disadvantaged communities, and the funding the Minister has captured for those communities must be acknowledged and welcomed. I wanted to put that on the public record and to thank him for it.

Programme B concerns the community enhancement programmes, disadvantaged communities, SICAP and social inclusion. How can we ensure full expenditure by year end?

The Minister has given broad figures up to the end of September but funding is still available until the end of December. Are there enough applications in the pipeline to spend the full amount for which the Minister has budgeted in 2019 for the various communities around the country? I acknowledge the increase in numbers under the seniors alert scheme. We often hear of rural isolation and increasing its reach by more than 13,000 people is to be welcomed.

Are the applications improving in quality? When schemes were new, some of the applicant bodies were not up to speed with their terms and conditions. Are many applications being rejected because of a lack of quality? Some community groups have been before the committee and they were concerned by the time and effort that needed to be put into preparing applications. Most of these bodies are voluntary and comprise people who, while having vast experience, give of their time on a voluntary basis to improve their communities. I am concerned that bureaucracy could get in the way of good applications. If there are issues with the quality of applications, we need to provide a resource to assist communities to improve them, so that we get the best value for money and that the funding benefits the communities and reaches them in the best possible way.

What barriers or problems exist for some communities in accessing finance? Some communities are better at this than others and some repeat applicants know the system very well. Some disadvantaged communities, however, may not have the same capacity to make quality applications and we need to help them with resources and assistance, so that they can benefit from the funding the Minister is providing. They may not have the same number of volunteers or other resources and we should identify them and assist them. Partnership groups around the country do this but we need to constantly evaluate the success of the schemes so that we can reach out to the communities which really need the funding.