Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent)

I know Deputy Mitchell said I had two or three lines in relation to Kilmore. Deputy Ellis has hit the nail on the head. If an application comes in to a Department, it will be dealt with. Deputy Heneghan, who is present, has spoken to me about this before. The Department cannot provide funding until an application comes in. Two application processes have been gone through and there will be further application processes. My advice, and I come from a community background myself, is to get back to the local authority and tell it to get ready for the next call. That advice is not in the reply. I am giving it to the Deputies myself. That is the way I would do it. I was telling the Deputies all the money that has been given out by the Department for the two iterations of the scheme. There was also a scheme for new community centres. Dublin community centres benefited from that, as did hundreds of community centres right across the country. This is not the forum in which this should be tackled. The Department has provided funding. My experience from making applications with my own community is that if you make the application, it will be dealt with fairly.

I would go back to the Deputy’s initial point about girls and boys togging out to play football or whatever else out in the open. I used to do it when I was a young lad, which is not today nor yesterday, in the turlough in Belclare but nobody could see us doing it. I would tell the Deputies to go back and see where the local authority is at with it. That is where it needs to be interrogated first. I appreciate that the Deputies have raised it and that Deputy Heneghan has also raised it with me and others in the group too. Working together, hopefully we will get it over the line.

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