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

We are investing in infrastructure but in people as well. I want to acknowledge the Minister, Deputy O’Gorman’s contribution in this area too. We are developing, under his guidance, local authority integration teams. This bulks up the capacity of local authorities across the country to have a very particular focus on migrant integration. My understanding is that 75% of those positions have been filled and that is trending upwards too.

I must also mention the community recognition fund which is all about how many communities have been doing the heavy lifting the Deputy mentioned. We have a new round of that at the moment. It is important people are aware of it. There are opportunities for communities to further develop their infrastructure. We have made the current process a bit more sophisticated than the last one, in that we have rolling entry points to it. There will be a couple of opportunities this year for communities across the country to improve the infrastructure in their community that will help everyone.

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