Paul Donnelly (Dublin West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I have a couple of questions and comments. My first question relates to the impact on existing supports under SICAP, in the context of the outturn of €56 million and the original estimate of €51 million. I know most of that increase is related to extra supports for Ukrainian refugees. Is there a way that we can separate the funding going to Ukrainian refugees?

I would be slightly concerned that supports which were originally going to, or were designated for SICAP and for people in disadvantaged communities, would in some way be utilised for Ukrainian refugees. Is there any sort of slippage in that in terms of supports? When it is all put into the one pot, and we have had 80,000 Ukrainian refugees come into the country, extra funding of €6 million to SICAP does not seem an awful lot as a support for 80,000 coming in the space of a year or a year and a half. My concern is that some of the existing services are suffering.

As to the local community development committees, LCDCs, one of the big concerns is around community engagement. I see there is an underspend though it is not a huge amount of money. There are concerns around the LCDCs, community supports, community engagement and how we ensure community participation. I am a bit concerned about there being an underspend. I know there was Covid-19, which probably would have affected that underspend as well. I refer to the community enhancement programme for the community centre investments in particular. There is a concern. One group in my constituency got a fairly decent amount of money for a community centre. However, the problem is that when they went in to get the assessment and the builders in, they discovered a significant problem and that has kicked back their timeline. I know the money has to be spent within a certain timeframe, but as we all know in building works, things happen in very old buildings. I asked the Minister, who said the Department would look at individual cases to allow the community to extend the time. However, I am wondering is that correct? Will that be allowed if something comes up? As we know ourselves, building projects can overrun.

Regarding the community services programme, CSP, is that underspend Covid-related and the fact that it is up to €2 million? Also, looking at the number of organisations supported under the CSP, it targeted 436 and there was delivery for 427. Regarding the numbers of those employment, there was a target of 2,005, which ended up at 2,120. I seek detail around the numbers in that.