Neale Richmond (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate the opportunity to come in on this. I thank the Minister for her kind words. More importantly, I thank her for driving this through with the Government. This is fundamentally a very important scheme, not just for the work it will do but also as a demonstration that crime does not pay.

Does the Minister agree that perhaps this could be viewed as a pilot scheme? While the substantial amount of funding involved is very welcome, it is still considerably less than the amount of cash being seized by An Garda Síochána in any year of the past decade, not to mention the amount of cash seized by the Criminal Assets Bureau, as referred to by Deputy Carey.

The Minister will be aware that one of the key champions of this scheme in communities, particularly around the Neilstown area of Clondalkin, is Councillor Kenneth Egan. As Councillor Egan has put the case to me, will all of the scheme's 120 valid applications get an element of funding or would it be equivalent to the sports capital grant where there is a ranking system whereby funding would be given not just to the most worthy projects with higher scores but also to those projects that can have the tangible effect that is expected?

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