Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will start with a straightforward and simple question. Is the Covid-19 stability fund exhausted or will there be further approvals of allocations? My second question is also straightforward. Does the Minister of State have responsibility for dormant accounts and can he tell me the total amount of money in the fund, net of the statutory reserve that must be kept and of any money kept aside for projects that already have been allocated funding?

My third question refers to something not in the Estimate and which I regret disappeared from it in 2012, namely, the RAPID programme. It was set up to deal with what are, scientifically and sociologically, based on census data, the most deprived communities in the country. Every one of those communities was an urban one. I never buy the argument that any rural communities are as deprived - and I take the whole meaning of the word "deprived" - as are some of the urban communities in this country.

The idea was that we would build a big wall around those communities in respect of funding but not anything else. This was because, as we have seen in the past, more affluent areas are much better able to grab the money. All sorts of people, outside of the relevant areas, get money for community development within deprived areas but sometimes that can be queried. The RAPID programme had some interesting characteristics in that regard. There was an area implementation team, AIT, on which people who actually lived in local authority housing had guaranteed representation. The Garda and the VECs were also included, as were other organisations.

Money was given by the Department. That meant that if community representatives, who actually lived the reality of life in an area, did not sign off on proposed projects, such as playgrounds, for example, those projects would not happen and the Department would not pay. In any co-funded scheme, therefore, the local representatives were the people with the ultimate choice as to whether a project would go ahead. The counter veto was with the local authority in respect of its half of the funding. It was necessary, therefore, to get both sides to agree for a project to go ahead. That type of set-up, however, stopped the domineering effect of people from the outside always telling people in more disadvantaged communities what was good for them.

Moreover, dormant accounts money totalling €100,000 was also being given every year for small things. It went through the AIT and it spent the money. There was again specific ring-fencing in respect of the power of the community representatives. For the first time in their lives, they were part of the decision-making process. That meant that it was not always somebody else making their decisions for them. For whatever mad reasons, which I have never understood because these are, scientifically, the most deprived communities, this focused and targeted scheme was abolished. All I got in reply to parliamentary questions as to why that happened was a load of raiméis.

It seemed to me that some interests got at this programme because they did not like it. Local authority managers did not like it either and that was because somebody else could ensure that the money was spent. Places like the Oliver Bond Street flats complex, which was in the news recently, saw great friendships created. For the first time, people in places like that had a real say in what was happening. They were at the table as equals and they had their share of the money. Other people did not then always have control of the money, because the local people had their veto as well.

It is not the Minister of State's fault that the programme does not now exist because he is new in the Department. I am glad that he comes from the voluntary sector. It seems that three of us here come from a background in that sector, or perhaps the five of us present do. I ask the Minister of State to look at the RAPID programme as it was in its heyday, taking into account the psychological empowerment that came with that programme. We are always talking about empowerment and we were giving real control to people in that programme. Will the Minister of State look at that model and consider whether it should be reinstated? I have never believed there was a valid reason to get rid of it.