Alan Kelly (Tipperary North, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I made the decision which I felt was necessary, having spoken to the organisations, which the Deputy knows well, having spoken about them many times himself. I felt it was necessary to ensure the funding continued and, hence, I made that decision. There was obviously a situation where many of these organisations became quite dependent on the funding that was in place. We need to ensure we have a consistency of approach but also to ensure we have scale and geographical coverage at national, regional and local level. As the Deputy is aware, there are many organisations in different areas with different plans and different profiles.

The process has already started. In the coming months, officials in my Department and the Department of Health will come together to put together a plan in regard to this whole space. I intentionally gave a year in order to do that. I can assure the Deputy that, in advance of any announcement of that plan, we will communicate strongly how it is going to work. To be fair, the plan has not been finalised and it would not be appropriate to talk about where we are at present as it is still being discussed. Once it is complete, however, we will communicate directly with these organisations, which is completely necessary. Obviously, we will then have the new programme for which the timelines were outlined earlier.

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