Jonathan O'Brien (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

They need to know their budgets for next year as quickly as possible, as I am sure the Minister of State would agree. We cannot have local projects, dependent on funding from the local drugs task force, not being able to plan and co-ordinate activities for next year. I cannot stress that too much. When I sat on the local drugs task force, when we did not know how much funding we were getting, we could not advise the local projects how much funding they were getting. They all have work plans they want to put in place and they know how much those will cost. Much of that is dependent on the funding. When setting the budgets for the local drugs task forces for next year, I appeal to the Minister of State if at all possible at least not to reduce their allocation. They have had reductions every year since 2008 and they cannot take any more.

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