Joe Carey (Clare, Fine Gael)
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79. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality when it is anticipated that the funding from the new community safety fund will be allocated; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [16064/22]

Joe Carey (Clare, Fine Gael)
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I ask the Minister when it is anticipated that the funding from the new community safety fund will be allocated and if she will make a statement on the matter.

Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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I thank Deputy Carey for raising this issue. As he is aware, budget 2022 provides for the establishment of the new community safety innovation fund, which will enable local communities to seek funding for innovative projects which will improve community safety in their areas. Community safety is about people being safe but also, as I have mentioned a number of times this evening, it is about feeling safe within their communities. This goes beyond traditional, high-visibility policing. The Commission on the Future of Policing in Ireland report recognised that preventing crime and harm and making our communities safer does not rest with An Garda Síochána and the Department of Justice alone, but requires a whole-of-government approach.

The new fund will reflect the success of the Criminal Assets Bureau, CAB, and other agencies by using money seized from the proceeds of crime to support investment in community safety projects. The fund, which is expected to grow in the coming years, will have an initial outlay of €2 million. The fund will be open to bodies involved in community safety and will support them in addressing local needs and opportunities for innovation not provided for in other funds managed by Departments and different agencies.

Such a fund, I hope, will ensure that the best proposals to improve community safety get the funding they need and will encourage the development of innovative ways in which to improve community safety by those people who understand local community safety needs best. Additionally, it will allow best practice initiatives on community safety to be shared as new proposals get developed.

Justice Plan 2022 commits to opening a call for funding proposals. This call will issue shortly, seeking applications for community safety projects and similar initiatives from bodies involved in community safety, such as the new local community safety partnership pilots, of which three are in place in north inner-city Dublin, Waterford and Longford. We also have the Drogheda implementation board and similar entities nationwide.

Applications will be assessed against stated criteria outlined in the call for proposals to ensure funding is allocated to encourage the development of innovative ways in which to improve community safety from those people who understand local community safety needs best. The overall criteria and how this will be applied has been agreed so I hope we will be able to open the call in a matter of weeks and ask communities to seek funding.

Joe Carey (Clare, Fine Gael)
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I congratulate the Minister on her initiative to set up the fund. It is important that communities can engage in it and make applications. I know three pilots have been set up in Longford, Waterford and north inner-city Dublin. Local community safety partnerships are to be set up throughout Ireland on the back of the pilot schemes. Will the Minister explain the pathway for communities to come forward and make applications? Is it limited to the partnership committees that are to be set up? Will the Minister give clarity in that regard?

I congratulate the Garda in Clare and Chief Superintendent Sean Colleran for their work, particularly over the weekend when €700,000 worth of drugs were found and seized in Ardnacrusha. I look forward to cash and other assets of those criminals being brought into this fund.

Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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I join the Deputy in thanking members of the Garda in Clare and other counties for the work they do in seizing these types of criminal assets from criminal gangs. It has been raised time and time again by the Deputy and many of our colleagues that it would be important to communities to see the assets going directly back into communities which are negatively impacted by these gangs. The fund will be available to all communities.

I anticipate and hope in coming years when we go beyond the three pilots and every county and area has a community safety partnership that it is not just about the structures, but about bringing together the Garda, local communities, education, Tusla and local services. When they set out a plan and identify what they want for their area, I anticipate there will be a fund to tap into to develop new programmes. The fund is not meant to replace existing streams but to identify new ways to support communities. The fund is open to everybody for now and I anticipate in years to come each community partnership will be able to apply directly to the fund.

Joe Carey (Clare, Fine Gael)
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Criminal gangs and their activities in drugs and organised crime are a blight on society and are having an impact throughout Ireland around the larger cities and spilling over into rural Ireland. I welcome the establishment of this fund. The Minister is right that communities need to see this money spent in their communities in order that they can feel safe. When will the pilot projects conclude? When does the Minister envisage that the partnerships will be established in County Clare and other counties?

Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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The intention is that the pilots will run for two years. That is to allow the communities to come together to set up community safety partnerships, to put a plan in place and embed that plan. That is well under way.

I visited Longford recently, where they are on target to have a plan in place. They have engaged with members of the community, from Comhairle na nÓg to the local women's support network to education, schools and everybody else.

A huge amount of work is under way to ensure the three pilots are up and running, have their plans in place and that there is time to see the plans implemented and bedded in. Once the pilots are finished, we hope to expand the initiative into all other counties. While it might take time for the pilots to run their course, it is important in relation to this fund that all communities have opportunities to access this type of money and to come up with or identify innovative ways to keep their community safe prior to the community safety partnerships being progressed.