Ms Anne Fitzgerald:

We have a community employment scheme that has places for 16 people. There are four and a manager on a community services programme. There is a contract with the HSE for the day centre. There are about eight people employed directly by the Rathmore Social Action Group in care assistant roles and one nursing role funded on specific programme contracts from each of those agencies. Our struggle is something that Tearmann Éanna referred to. There is a lot of programme money available for us to do various programmes. We can fund-raise very well. We can build things and organise. Where we are struggling as an organisation is at the level of infrastructure within the organisation. The problem is in having the core resources and funding to help us be open for business and do business, such as compliance, governance and being able to look after health and safety. It is this core funding that we are lacking.

We can raise money to build houses and have gardens. What nobody will give us money for is to have a business that is a social enterprise that is open for business. That is our significant and absolute gap going forward. There is goodwill, community spirit and a huge level of volunteering. There is great will, but we must be able to sustain our organisation going forward with a level of core funding and be able to access that money. No programme allows us to do that. We are not allowed to have management fees on a HSE contract or take out some of the money to contribute towards compliance and all of the costs of doing business. We are determined to bring our standards up and be fully compliant with the governance code for voluntary organisations. That is not without cost. At the moment, all compliance issues are done by the voluntary board of directors. We have no staff to do any of that stuff.