Joe O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I will address Deputy Paul Donnelly's question on the community services programme, CSP. The core allocation is the same as last year. As the Deputy is probably aware, it is closed to new entrants at present while we are restructuring the scheme. This is being done in consultation with the steering group, which has representatives from the sector. What is not reflected in the figures is that we developed a support scheme of almost €9 million specifically to get the community services programme through Covid. This is because community services were lacking income because they had to close community halls and were not generating traded income. You can add €9 million to the total, as this is the amount spent on keeping them going over the past year or two. We hope to open the programme later this year. It is not as soon as we had hoped simply because the unit that has responsibility for it also has responsibility for the stability fund. There have been a couple of rounds of the stability fund and the unit's time was taken up by this, the support fund and generally working to keep the community and voluntary sector going during Covid.

That is why there is a delay to reopening the CSP. Approximately 15 are in the pipeline that had gone through the expression of interest process before we closed the scheme. We hope to make announcements about them at the end of this quarter or, if not, in quarter 2.