Mr. John Hannigan:

I am happy to do so. I have a history of having worked for Respond at a time when we were delivering a number of direct build schemes. Each of them had a community centre at the heart of it. The scheme we are currently building in Inchicore is housing with support, which is a very new form of delivery. Referring back to a previous question, we are delivering specifically-designed accommodation for older persons to allow them stay in their homes much longer than previously, so they do not go on to nursing homes. The costs of doing that are quite significant. The funding mechanisms at this point for either CAS or CALF are insufficient and cannot be accounted for within that development process. Moreover, CREL funding does not exist at all for this kind of housing. We have to look for additional funding elsewhere. The HSE has come up with an agreement to fund the capital element and enable that to happen, along with the community lottery funding we are also trying to access. However, that is a very limited level of funding. There is a statistic at the moment that 98% of current 24-year-olds will acquire a disability before they die. We are looking to build more homes for older persons, or lifetime homes because we know people are going to acquire disabilities. Enabling them to stay and live in place within their communities without having to move to nursing homes requires us to start delivering spaces that enable services to be provided. Our current funding mechanisms do not allow for that at all. It would be helpful for those kind of things to be looked at.

Even in terms of space for children to be able to play, we are building in the inner city in Dublin 1 at this point in time and we were asked, in the design process with Dublin City Council, to put a community element within that building. Again, that could not be funded under the current schemes which meant the inner-city children who will live in that scheme, which is a one, two and three-bedroom scheme, will have very little of their own space to be able to play within. We had proposed a five-a-side football pitch, for example. It cannot be provided under the current funding schemes. If we are trying to develop our inner city and long-term lifetime homes for people who want to stay in their community, then the funding mechanism has to look at that element of the community spaces and they are unable to do that-----