Colm Burke (Cork North Central, Fine Gael)
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67. To ask the Minister for Rural and Community Development the funding her Department has provided to community and voluntary organisations to date to help with the impact of Covid-19; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [60131/21]

Colm Burke (Cork North Central, Fine Gael)
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This goes back to the issue of funding and how the past two years and Covid-19 has affected community groups, community centres and sporting organisations. I ask the Minister about the supports provided to the community associations and community centres as a result of Covid-19 and what further work we can do on that. We are going to go through at least another three to four months of difficulties in this area. The Minister might give me some information on that area.

Joe O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Green Party)
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Through the Covid-19 stability fund, my Department supported a total of 840 organisations in 2020 and 2021 with total funding of approximately €48 million. That fund is now closed and there are no plans at present for further rounds of the stability fund. The innovate together fund was launched in May 2020 and was administered by Rethink Ireland. This consisted of a €5 million commitment from my Department’s Dormant Accounts Fund and €600,000 from philanthropic donations. The purpose of the fund was to assist organisations working with vulnerable people and communities. Some 71 projects received grants of between €20,000 and €200,000 as well as non-financial business supports.

My Department currently supports more than 420 community organisations in the community services programme, CSP, to provide local services through a social enterprise model. My Department recently announced a further extension of €1 million to the CSP support fund to cover the period up to December 2021, bringing the total funding allocated to the CSP support fund to €8.95 million for 2020 to 2021. This funding was provided to CSP-supported organisations which required additional assistance to continue to retain their CSP-supported employees on their payroll, provided assistance for the employers’ PRSI contributions and supported organisations considered by my Department to be most in need to cover overhead costs.

Most recently, I was pleased to launch a new community activities fund. This €9 million fund is being provided by the Government to support community and voluntary groups impacted by Covid-19. This once-off funding, allocated under the Department’s community enhancement programme and administered locally by the local community development committees, will support groups, especially in disadvantaged areas, with their running costs as well as with improvements to their facilities.

Colm Burke (Cork North Central, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Minister for all the work that has been done in this area over the past two years and for the funding that has been made available. One of the challenges that we now have as a result of the downturn in business in certain areas is that there will be people who will not go back to the jobs they had had before. Will we open up the area of community employment, CE, and change the rules to make it more adaptable to the changes that have occurred over the past 12 months? Is that being considered at this time so that there is a benefit for people who do have not employment at the moment as well as for the community groups and centres throughout the country?

Joe O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Green Party)
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I do not want to stray out of my departmental remit. I will only say yes, we are looking at community employment.

On the Deputy’s initial question, the stability fund was our main response to community and voluntary sector for larger groups. A large number of groups were covered under that. The community services support fund was targeted particularly at groups funded under that stream, with groups that needed traded income, or relied on traded income to a fair extent. For example, many community centres using a social enterprise model were not able to generate traded income over the past while. Obviously, restrictions were lifted during the summer, but prior to that they had been suffering, which is why we added more to the support fund. There was a gap in terms of smaller community groups, and that is what the more recent community activity fund is targeting. That €9 million will be distributed by the local community development committees throughout the country. They will be small grants but they will be very effective in remobilising those smaller community groups throughout the country as well.

Colm Burke (Cork North Central, Fine Gael)
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May I just ask one final issue to the Minister of State about co-ordination of supports? I have come across a situation where there is support from Avondhu Duhallow, which is a very effective organisation, but there are not supports, for instance, from the local authority. Can we look at that co-ordination of supports so that if moneys are granted by one organisation, sufficient moneys are granted, the other organisations involved are made aware by the Department or the relevant organisation that is providing the funding, and there is joined-up thinking in that whole area?

David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael)
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Is the community services fund open for new applications and, if not, is it intended to be? If so, how many a new applications would be accepted?

Joe O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Green Party)
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I will first pick up on Deputy Burke’s point. I think he was talking about a local development company, Avondhu Duhallow, which is in a different realm again. Its funding stayed solid in terms of the programmes it rolls out for Government, be it SICAP or LEADER or whatnot. I am not sure how the local authorities might support it in different ways. On the stability fund, organisations were asked what their earnings were. They were asked for details on their accounts and where they were getting funding. There are checks and balances done in that regard.

On the community services programme, we are working through the recommendations of the Indecon report.

We obviously stalled it a little over the last year or so while we have been restructuring the community services programme. We have a small number of applications that were in the pipeline when we stalled it. We are going to try to process them early next year and then we are looking at the middle of next year, roughly speaking, because we have a bit of work to do yet before we reopen the new restructured programme.