Joe O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

To pick up on Deputy Burke's point, there certainly is a constant flow of feedback. Regarding the community activities fund and the community enhancement programme, decisions in terms of local allocations are made by the local community development committees, LCDCs, in a bottom-up approach. The main feedback we get is that the schemes are very popular and are, in fact, oversubscribed, which is why we were glad to put more funding in that direction this year as well. In terms of the strategy, it should fit in with the local economic and community plan, but it is the LCDCs making the calls in terms of where the funding goes, with the proviso that it goes to the areas that need it most.

I take Deputy Stanton's point about scoping, broadly speaking. As I mentioned earlier, community centres across the country have a different life. If there is an area with no centre and a need for one, my first question would be to the local authority as to why it did not plan for that. I see it in my constituency, where there are large housing estates and the facilities, including community centres, were not put in when they were built. The first thing to do is to see whether the local authority can provide a piece of land to get things going. Securing land is often where projects start and get moving.

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