Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I understand the Minister of State will be receiving a letter of comfort to allow her to commence the process. Can she confirm that she cannot invite expressions of interest until she gets that letter of comfort? Having received the letter of comfort and invited expressions of interest, is it correct that the tendering companies will have a period of approximately six weeks to respond, following which there will be an evaluation process and the drafting of detailed plans? Preparation of detailed plans could take six to eight weeks, or longer, and they will then have to be assessed. At the end of that process, contracts will need to be put in place. Given that all sorts of answers were provided in this Chamber predicting that the social inclusion and community activation programme, SICAP, would be up and running long before now, it is unlikely that we will see any Leader companies disbursing money in 2015.

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