Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

The community and voluntary sector play a very significant role in the well-being of our communities. Due to changes in the tendering process for employment services, community-run job clubs are closing in several areas. These have provided invaluable support over many decades. These projects were funded 100% by grants and have no surplus of funds built up. They cannot pay out redundancy to staff. There is no grant funding to pay for these redundancies. This means there will be costly and expensive wind-up processes involving insolvency. This will impact very unfairly on staff and on the voluntary board members, who have given years of service to the communities over several decades. Will the Government provide grant funding to pay for these redundancies? This will be a less costly approach and would save time and money. Will the Taoiseach look into this and come back to me?

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