Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I apologise that I am late and that I will have to leave shortly for a speaking slot in the Dáil Chamber. I have some observations. It is about pulling it all together. It sounds like things are planned and things are happening in terms of the Empowering Communities programme. I am not terribly familiar with the programme and I need to get familiar with it, but I will give what insight I can.

In my own community, Togher was designated a RAPID area and insofar as it worked, and to be fair to the Department, it is the case that we cannot tackle disadvantage by public realm works like playgrounds or by supporting community centres. They certainly help and they can play a very significant role, but this goes to education, employment and any amount of other things. Insofar as RAPID had an impact on my community, what it did was pull it all together. It created planning mechanisms that led to a number of things, for example, a new bus route and new football pitches, and it helped to co-ordinate a campaign for regaining DEIS status for the school. It was drawing it all together. To be fair to Cork City Council, it retains an element of the RAPID programme in terms of employing some community wardens for those areas even though the scheme does not exist nationally.

Progress has been made in my community. We can put that down to a number of things, for example, the funding supports that have been available to community associations, which were beneficial, and we were very lucky to have some very good community gardaí and a succession of excellent school principals, and there were a number of employment measures that went well locally as well. There are undoubtedly still challenges but I want to give that insight. It is that ability to pull things together. That has to happen at the highest level but also at local level, and maybe that Empowering Communities piece, which I need to read up on, can do some of that. What is important is that ability to plan for what a community needs from every Government Department, not just the Department of Rural and Community Development. That is the crucial element.

I have two questions before I go to speak on football on Private Members’ business.