Patrick Costello (Dublin South Central, Green Party)
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We might stick with funding just for a moment. Many of these funding programmes are often designed by somebody very far removed from the front line. An example down here is the social inclusion and community activation programme, SICAP. Much of the time good work is done in spite of SICAP and not because of it. Are there roadblocks or poor design in these types of funding? If we do not have like-for-like funding akin to the Social Inclusion Fund ready and if it will take far too long to create that, surely the responsibility on Dublin and London is to find other ways to get in money quickly. With community development programmes here, money went straight to community groups without having to go through giant programmes and SICAP. Is there something we can take away, such as deletions or changes? Maybe we do not need like-for-like funding to replace the European Social Fund if it is a big, hulking bureaucratic mess. We could hope for something better.