Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

Yes, otherwise people's efforts will be pointless. Encouragingly, many recommendations from the White Paper on supporting voluntary activity have been taken by various Government and statutory agencies and are being successfully implemented. I do not wish to use monetary terms, but the amount of resources the State gives to groups is enormous. Many of these activities are now mainstream, with people who used to engage part-time, at night or on Saturdays now doing so on a full-time basis and there are huge resources, such as in premises. There are approximately 5,000 capital structures in one form or another under development around the country through voluntary groups, including sporting, cultural and caring groups. As I told Deputy Rabbitte, the types of organisations being represented are high profile. If they make good recommendations, we should act on them and I will do everything I can to ensure this happens.

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