Mark Ward (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I mentioned six different Departments. I do not want to oversimplify, but €60,000, €10,000 from each Department, would really work. We need to get these people around the table. At the moment Departments are working in silos. The left hand does not seem to know what the right hand is doing sometimes. I was asking the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine to arrange such a meeting to get all the stakeholders around the one table and to see if there is any other funding in other Departments that could really help this club.

For example, and I got a reply to a parliamentary question about this tonight, we have done a fair bit of work on a Bill relating to proceeds of crime and returning the proceeds seized by the Criminal Assets Bureau, CAB, into disadvantaged communities. In fairness to the Minister, Deputy McEntee, she has moved a fair bit on that. There is a grant open for that. I got news of that only tonight. That, I think, would really benefit this community. It is a community of high disadvantage and one that has been detrimentally impacted by crime over the years. If that money seized by CAB were given over to something like the horse project, it would send out a really clear message to the community that it is being listened to and valued. Something needs to happen.

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