Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent)

I know the project was aimed at social inclusion. I wanted to tease out the definition of social inclusion with the Minister by way of a question. There are areas where nothing but houses are constructed and they are devoid of community facilities. This is a significant disadvantage as regards community development. Does the Minister anticipate the programme will capture that if it is to have full area cover? Will there be money available from these funds to deal with that and in what manner will they be dealt with? Bodies such as Combat Poverty and NARSA, the national institute for regional and spatial analysis, which is attached to Maynooth college, have mapped this as a type of poverty, in a recent publication and it is a useful finding. As the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government was involved, was there any discussion on policies as regards the obligations on developers or, where the Part V provisions are not working, where community facilities cannot be achieved without additional funding directly from the State?

There is no doubt that significant difficulties will arise if community facilities are not put in place that allow young people to function as they should and allow voluntarism to develop rather than engaging in endless fundraising. If there is a village, for example, with the population of a town, with no facilities and no heritage of community, there is endless fundraising. This rules out the possibility of a very-——

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