Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputies very much. I have a lot to address in one minute. Deputies Ó Cathasaigh and Gould raised the issue of the Before 5 centre and indeed the Tánaiste has raised it with me as well. As I explained to the Deputies, right now our capital funding schemes are for expansions. The situation with the Before 5 centre is where we have an existing service that needs capital to keep going what it has at the moment. We are looking to see if there is a way of repurposing some of our existing capital to a fund that would be a kind of sustainability capital fund. I am working on that at the moment. I will be honest with the Deputy that I cannot give any absolute guarantees for one service but I am aware that there are services, like the one the Deputy has just spoken to, that have a need.

As I said, the Tánaiste has raised this with me as well, so we are working to see if there is a solution. That is as much as I can say to Deputy Gould on that point.

A supply management unit is being developed for my Department. It is a bit like the forward-planning unit in the Department of Education. We talk to the CCCs all the time but it is not done on that properly structured basis, so the idea is a supply management unit, and then we can feed into county development plans. My Department will start making direct submissions to county development plans. The two streams of funding for which we have approval to date are about expansion of existing services, but I am aware that there is a gap there as regards brand-new services and the costs there. As we go forward, and particularly in the 2025-26 capital funding year, I will look to put in place mechanisms for capital funding to support brand-new services as well. The Department is looking at that, and that is the next step in our capital programme.

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