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

It would appear that the Minister of State is going to get in €10 million more this year than will be spent. If one looks at cash expenditure, then a total of €18 million will be unspent. For some reason the Government is holding onto the money. My understanding is that excluding the statutory reserve required to reunite people with dormant accounts, as the Minister of State put it, more than €100 million in the Dormant Account Fund is not being released for the purposes for which it was collected from the banks. Perhaps the Minister of State would confirm the figure on the record of the House? Why is the money being held and why are we not using it for the intended purposes?

I will give the Minister of State two examples. Could she explain why the Government ceased the operation of the scheme we had in place for RAPID areas, whereby we allocated €100,000 every year for small programmes in the most disadvantaged areas in the country.

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