Joe O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I can come in on one of the points on funds that are dedicated to different areas. Each lot area, each area that a local development company looks after, gets a SICAP allocation based on the deprivation index and based on the level of deprivation in that area. I opened a new programme the year before last, the Empowering Communities programme, which is even more focused on those areas that are most deprived. We did a filter across the country in terms of those really small areas, literally estates, that were top or bottom of the list, however you want to look at it in terms of being the most deprived. We put extra resourcing and people in there as well. The Empowering Communities programme is an approach we would like to grow going forward. We have the new deprivation index now as well that will tell us even more about those places around the country, and in Cork city as well, which I know need extra resourcing in terms of community workers at least.