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

Since the Deputy specifically raised the community recognition fund, I will try to address the particular point he made. This was a €50 million announcement from last year. Each local authority was given an allocation based specifically on the number of new arrivals they had. After that a process ensued in each local authority area whereby the local authority was obliged to engage with communities on the ground. Maybe we can question the quality, breadth and depth of that in some cases, but the logic was that the communities themselves would identify resources they needed in their own communities. This is the wider community, as well, I am not just talking about new arrivals. Following on from that, allocations would have been dealt out to the different groups to improve their facilities. The Deputy mentioned some of them. The the whole object was that community recognition fund would benefit the wider community as well.

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