Peter Roche (Galway East, Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister and the Minister of State. I thank them and their officials for being with us.

I have a contribution to make rather than a question to ask. It is based on my experience. I happen to be part of the board of Galway Rural Development of which I have been the chairperson for quite some time. The Minister may have met our CEO in recent times. Extraordinary things happen with any funding that is provided for companies and the Galway Rural Development company is doing extraordinary work reaching out to areas that are, by and large, starved of investment in small projects and schemes.

I will mention some statistics. We have to be a little parochial and in the west of Ireland, I feel, we sometimes do not shout loudly enough. In Galway east, we received €37 per person from LEADER, compared with €97 per person in Roscommon, €76 per person in County Offaly, €64 per person in Mayo and €53 per person in Clare. Moving across to Connemara in my own county it is €79 per person. I see a problem therein. It is an unjust way of dividing the funding. It is not based on socioeconomic or other justifiable profile. It is like a continuation of underfunding by the Department as our local authority suffered exactly the same fate. This is exacerbated by the removal of the additional funding for the food and co-operation projects. An Exchequer funding project needs to be put in place to rebalance our continued underfunding in east Galway.

On the social inclusion and community activation programme, SICAP, the volume of IPAS and Ukrainians in the county has clearly not been met with a proportionate increase in a new arrivals budget. The current additional allocation is insufficient. As for SICAP, there is only so much we can do with it without substantial additional funding. I will use the example of the Corralea Court Hotel in Tuam, which is one of the new centres for IPAS. Our SICAP people do not have the financial resources to be able to reach out and continue to provide the services they are craving.

I am one of the greatest advocates of and believers in rural and community development. I have a long association with it. The figures I gave are an indicator of why, from a Galway east perspective, we need to be brought up to the same level as others. Some outstanding work is being done and I want that to continue, along with the LEADER company, Galway Rural Development and the outstanding work it does and the people it employs who are reaching out to these communities. I wish that anomaly to be addressed, if possible.