Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputies for their input. Initially, the fund for the upgrade of the community centres was €45 million. A lot of applications came in. It was initially anticipated that there would be €15 million in this fund but I was able to find savings from other areas. I know this is an important one and that many communities are benefiting. I was even out in Deputy Donnelly's own constituency in Hartstown and it was well-received that day. The community was delighted. The community centre certainly needed a facelift. The Deputies are asking me whether there will be more funding. I really think it is a good scheme and I will make the case to see if we can get further funding. Again, that will be part of the budgetary process. We have the fund now for the new community centres and they are important as well. There are many new communities across the country which do not have the wherewithal to acquire a community centre. We want local input into this as well. For these big schemes from €1 million to €6 million, we thought it was important for the financial management of these projects - because they can go awry - and we wanted the involvement of the local authority or a State agency to help communities to manage these. It is a big ask to get a community to do that itself.

The smaller grants of up to €300,000 were administered through Pobal. I have been out and about and a few people have said to me that certain projects were going to cost more than they thought. That is usual. I told them they could not have gold taps and they had to cut their cloth to measure, but we do not want to see anybody not progressing and we will look at things within reason. There is no doubt that we will do that. In terms of time delays, I am trying to keep the pressure on. If I have not spent the money, it is very hard to make the case for additional funding when I go in with a cap in hand to the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform. I know there will be delays and we will give a degree of flexibility. That is important because at the end of the day, this is about communities. It is about helping them to realise their ambition for their areas in terms of a new community centre or upgrading the existing one. We were very conscious during Covid-19 that communities could not do the normal fundraising so this was the helping hand. Some of the communities only got small amounts but it really has made a difference. Again, it came from the bottom-up approach. I thank the Deputies for raising this matter with me.

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