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

The Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth has a geographical focus for grant applications, as I outlined. I am also a Minister of State in the Department of Rural and Community Development, which provides social inclusion and community activation programme allocations and allocations to volunteer centres. Going into 2024, we are specifically looking at the numbers of new arrivals, both international protection applicants and Ukrainians in each local development company area. That is a refresh in our data from last year in terms of where we focus people on the ground, that is, community workers. We have the community recognition fund. That specifically examined the numbers of new arrivals from 12 months ago. The numbers are largely accurate. That fund is being rolled and is helping to increase infrastructure across communities. Those two mechanisms are especially targeted in terms of numbers that have come in the last 18 months.

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