Ms Eilis Murray:

I am happy to take that. If a community group is putting in an application to many of our own organisations, the first thing they have are very clear criteria for what that fund is available for. That is very readily available to any of the community organisations to go through specific criteria around what would constitute a successful application. The second thing is that nearly all our organisations do briefing sessions in advance that a community group can come along to, where there is an open consultation system whereby the funder will clearly lay out what it is it will be looking for in the application, what the process is and how long it will take for the applicant to get feedback. As the Deputy said, for a lot of community groups this is unknown territory, so they need to be very well supported in the process and that is one thing philanthropic organisations do. From experience, they believe it is absolutely essential. When they put the application in or when they are drafting it, most of the organisations are online at the end of a telephone to support them in completing them.

Very clear and engaged processes are involved. They stay with the communities and the communities have the opportunity to interact with the organisations because it is a difficulty. Any of our organisations want to see success and, equally, that it does not waste the time of the community organisation. There is huge respect for that. However, from recently being part of a selection process for applications, of the 55 applications, only ten projects were selected, which is where the need for philanthropy lies. For us, that means 45 projects still need the funding sought and will perhaps have to go elsewhere or not proceed. It is an example of how many applications come in and shows that, for every application that is funded, there are many that are not. That is a clear signal of the need for greater philanthropic support in the Irish community space.