Ms Mary Hurley:

I thank the Deputy. This is a huge area the Deputy is passionate about. I see the parliamentary questions and I know where the Deputy is coming from.

To give the Deputy some high-level facts on the community budget, it has increased from €146 million in 2018 to €222 million. That is largely made up of those really important programmes we deliver in communities: SICAP, a community centres fund, the community services programme, CSP, and all of that. They make a huge difference to communities. The Deputy is right. For communities experiencing disadvantage, that money makes such a difference.

Going back to what the Deputy spoke to regarding the work we are doing with the Department of the Taoiseach to empower communities where there is disadvantage, he referred to our empowering communities programme, which involves 14 areas, and indeed the Whitehall-Ballymun-Finglas area in the Deputy's constituency is involved in that.

One of the things we have seen is targeting and we have seen it really well in the north-east inner city. When funds are targeted and some of the social issues that are impacting communities are addressed, it makes such a difference and it can turn things around. We have been funding the north-east inner city to the tune of €7.5 million for the last number of years and that covers things like policing. It covers community centres. We have seen great work done in the Rutland Centre, the community hub there. It is about learning the lessons from that. That is what we are teasing through with Liz Canavan in the Department of the Taoiseach at the moment around those 14 areas, how can we taper the services to the needs of those local communities. It really has to be the local communities themselves identifying what the issues are. We have seen that. Obviously, there is the partnership in the Deputy's area. We have seen the work that can be done on the ground and I know that work is progressing really well. It is about working with communities to see that they identify the issues in their area and it is about targeting the funding.

The other thing, as the Deputy well knows and pointed to himself, is that one size does not fit all in urban communities. There are different issues in urban communities - in Galway, the inner city, north Dublin or south Dublin. One of the things we are trying to do, and we are doing it around that empowering communities programme, is to identify those issues to work with communities and to have people on the ground who understand the issues and complexities for those people and work the funding there.