Michael Ring (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Funding of €119 million has been provided over three years, including €38 million this year. That is a substantial amount. I would not like the Deputy to think that it is not. My capital budget is €80 million. A total of €38 million is going into SICAP. I agree with Deputy Curran because he is talking my language. I would like to see the figure doubled if I had the money. I will be looking at it. I will be talking to the Minister for Finance and his Department in the coming months about the budgets for the years ahead. I will see if I can find extra funding.

I like this scheme. SICAP deals with disadvantaged areas. In the last round, a total of 110,000 people were dealt with and supported on a one-to-one basis. Some 29% lived in disadvantaged areas while 47% were long-term unemployed. I will outline some more figures. People gained a great deal of employment from the one-to-one assistance and they created employment. We dealt with young people and Travellers. We dealt with people who needed more education. Deputy Curran is correct in stating that SICAP is a great programme. I would like to see more funding for it. My plan is to ensure that the people in disadvantaged areas are looked after. We have seen €119 million over three years. The figure of €38 million per year is a substantial amount of money to be putting into these programmes. Of course I would like to have more.

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