Mr. Kieran Moylan:

Mr. Jordan talked about the empowering communities programme, which is particularly designed and very much supported by the Minister of State, Deputy O'Brien, to support particular urban disadvantaged communities and to bring together the various stakeholders in defined areas, building on some of the lessons from the north-east inner city initiative in Dublin and so on, and other locally-based initiatives.

With regard to building capacity, the key structure that is in place to support that interface between local government, the community and voluntary sector and local community development organisations are the local community development committees. As members know, they were established following the 2014 reform Act. There is one in place in each local authority area. They bring together the elected members, the council executive, State development agencies and then representatives from various interests, including the community and voluntary sector. Their role has been expanding, and we reviewed what they were doing last year in terms of resources that we have been providing through the additional staffing resources provided to local authorities towards that community function within local authorities themselves. Arising from that review, there was an increase in the funding allocated for this year, and that is now being paid out to local authorities. That is going to enable them to strengthen the resources in that community function in the local authorities, and part of that function links in with what Mr. Jordan referred to in the capital delivery teams around the pipeline of projects. I know that one of the local authorities presented to their colleagues around this, and they saw how the work of that community function also feeds into the identification support development of capital projects. There is a strong link-up there, and the resources we are providing into that structure have increased this year. I hope that will see some benefits.

Some other programme areas the committee will be very familiar with as well have a very strong capacity-building function, for example, the LEADER programme in rural areas, where there is animation at local level, and where the supporting capacity of organisations links them up with other sources of support, channelling the relevant projects for LEADER that are relevant for LEADER but channelling other projects into other programmes. There is also the social inclusion community activation programme, SICAP. It can be seen from the data and the indicators there that it has been very successful. It has also played a key role in addressing the response to the crisis from the war in Ukraine. It operates, obviously, in urban and rural areas, working in particular with disadvantaged communities and groups. In both the case of LEADER and SICAP, all of the contracts for the next five years have been awarded. That process is complete so there is a structure in place at local level through the local development companies, LEADER and SICAP, and SICAP is urban as well. There is also a structure in place in the local authorities, and now that capital development delivery teams will be in place in the local authorities, there should be - and we love this phrase - joined-up thinking on creating that pipeline of quality projects and, as the Chair said, looking at the areas that have been left behind. It is being dealt with from both the local authority side and the community side.