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

It is important to mention the PPNs in this regard. In many respects, they are the most comprehensive network of community and voluntary organisations around the country.

We fund their support workers as well to build their own capacity. I do not want to leave the PPNs out of this discussion because they are playing a key role. I also do not want to leave out the empowering communities programme either. It is a smaller programme, which contains 14 projects at the moment. We hope to expand it a little bit this year. It is specifically based on those small areas around the country that are literally the poorest. We have used the Pobal deprivation index to identify them.

There will be other communities, particularly new ones where new estates have started up where there may not necessarily be a representative community council. However, those that are not the poorest tend to be able to self organise more quickly, in my experience.

Our SICAP, PPNs and ECP programmes are particularly focused on those communities that are more deprived in terms of the Pobal deprivation index. We get an annual report on SICAP performance is another answer to the question.

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