Ms Dearbhla Holohan:

I will respond to Dr. Farry's question around the EU funding. There is real and genuine concern at the moment around the replacement for the European Social Fund, ESF. With the levelling up agenda and the shared prosperity fund, we can see that the money is not there. There is not a like-for-like replacement. As Ms Nolan has said, community education and the employability programme that had previously been funded by the ESF, and which Dr. Farry will know well from his time as the Minister, are all sitting and not knowing what is going to happen after the end of March 2023. Those programmes would be the follow-on programmes for young people progressing through the likes of ourselves. That is where they would move into a more employability focus. There is no clear path for any of us as to what will happen come April 2023. We will see a lot of organisations closing or severely downsizing, along with the withdrawal of services in the community and particularly for young people and people with disabilities. This will affect people right across Northern Ireland. Again, the lack of an Assembly makes it very difficult for us to challenge this in any way or get answers to any questions. It is a very real concern at the moment. There are applications going in for peace building funds out of that as well.