Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

Part of the preparation for this involved the small unit pulling together the resources that exist for supporting community and voluntary groups. It is only when one sees it all together, one realises how many exist. The community and voluntary sector spends approximately €300 million annually, outside of sport. It is spent on community issues, such as the resources which went into tackling economic and social disadvantage. More than €60 million goes into some of those programmes. The local development social inclusion programme is allocated €50 million. The community services programme has over €40 million and the rural social scheme also has over €40 million. The community development programme spends €24 million, and a Leader programme spends a large amount of money. Public funding of almost €150 million is being given to the new layout of the Leader programmes. Some €13 million is allocated under the national rural development programmes. Almost €50 million is allocated to the young people's facilities funds, mainly linked to drugs-related issues. Other programmes include those related to peace and reconciliation and RAPID.

When all these programmes are put together the total allocation comes to several hundreds of millions. This excludes entirely the sport sector. If that is added, the total is much more than €500 million. Infrastructural grants come in other ways. When there was no money there were far more people involved in these activities. It does not come down to people being unemployed in the past either. It is different, and people have done research on this in every country. There has been change, and people have better homes and could have access to 100 television channels. There are better music and other types of facilities. One can see this type of research in every report on the matter.

Ultimately, we are still lucky in this country because of the amount of people who are prepared to give their few hours to an under tens team, the scouts, walking clubs or An Óige etc. The issue is how all this is pulled together to make a structure for the future.

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