Mr. Donal McCormack:

I thank Senator Wall for his comments. It is great to hear he is getting his hands dirty and getting involved in gardening. I echo his points on that. Particularly over the last 14 months, I have been encouraging my kids to get out in the garden and get planting. I have found it to be beneficial and I know other community groups have found it beneficial to get growing. I know Grow It Yourself Ireland is definitely on board with that.

On Ray D'Arcy and the suggestion for every town in Ireland to have a space, such as a forest or park, to grow your own, Community Gardens Ireland strongly believes that every urban area should have a place for local communities to grow their own. That can take the form of local authority land, HSE land or other public bodies' land.

The LDA has a State-owned database on its website with a map and a web viewer. It is useful to pinpoint all State-owned land in local areas. Community groups have found it useful to find local authority-owned land, as well as land owned by the HSE, the ESB and others. It can be used to find out if land is publicly owned but there is no information to contact those bodies or to find out how to go from being a community group to asking them formally for the land. A bit of ownership is needed for when a public body has a large amount of land in an urban area to make it more amenable for community groups to request such land.

Senator Wall asked about the €500,000 and how many projects would benefit from that. It is like asking "How long is a piece of string?". I would hope for a minimum of five new community gardens or allotments. It depends on the amount of land made available and on where it is, as the price of land varies. One of the requirements we always had is to have it close enough to urban areas for access by people who cannot drive or if there are no public bus services available.

There is a need for a target associated with how much of an increase we need. We mentioned that during the presentation. It would be ideal for Ireland to set a target for how many more projects we need to achieve by a certain year, which would mean buy-in from all community and public bodies to work together. At the moment it seems a bit aimless and having a set target would allow more strategy to be put in place.