Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

I cannot find any specific reference to that figure in all the documentation I was given. I asked my civil servants to check through documents for a specific commitment of €2 billion for RAPID areas. I accept it is stated somewhere and I am not trying to allege that the Deputy is making it up. If it is stated, what we are talking about is the spend, in other words, expenditure on a health centre and so on. The figure I quoted of €300 million does not represent social inclusion spend, it is matched off against what was in the RAPID plans, which would not tally with the total spend in the areas.

We are serious about addressing needs in areas of deprivation. However, we need to focus not only on the total spend in those areas, which is important, but also what the funding is spent on. I gave a classic example on an earlier occasion of the right way and the wrong way to allocate funding. A great deal of money was spent — I remember it being spent — on the building of Ballymun flats 30 or 40 years ago and they are now being knocked down. That money was badly spent in that there was no social planning and so on. What is happening in Ballymun today is different because there is a buy-in to that by the local community. There are many strands to RAPID and it is not all about money, though money is incredibly important. However, the second thing that is different this time is that we are looking for buy in from communities. That is absolutely essential so the money is well spent in terms of the social dividend it gives to the communities in RAPID areas. We could be obsessed totally in seeing it as a money gain. It is not as simple as that. It is a matter as well of spending the money in a way the communities recognise will improve their lives.

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