Neasa Hourigan (Dublin Central, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

My final point is about my experience in my community. I want to talk a little about day centres, the support for day centres and how integral they are. During Covid-19, they all closed. At a time before the election, I was volunteering and we were very aware that they were open for five days a week. Then, all of a sudden, they were shut. For many people, it was their only social point.

I have a couple of questions about day centres, the first of which is on funding, which seems to me to always be slightly piecemeal. One is always worried about whether one will or will not get a grant. I have been involved in conversations in my community about whether they will get a grant. Also, they seem like an incredibly valuable framework. We have a very valuable system and other countries do not seem to have it. Many of them, though, are attached to the church and are therefore on land or in buildings that we do not necessarily have full, public ownership of. Often, honestly, the church has done a very good job in holding onto some of those services. How important are those kinds of services to communities? I am biased and I view them as quite vital for some people. They are also quite vulnerable in some ways. We are starting to see with some services that somebody is saying that a building is not fit for purpose but really, that is not necessarily actually what is going on. Then, they become homeless. It seems like, as with lots in Ireland, we do not quite control them but we desperately need them and we do not want them to go. My question is about how we support them. Are we worried about those kinds of services?