The An Taisce-led national spring clean in 1999, 2000 and 2001, hailed by this Government as a tremendous success, has been abandoned. The development of broadly based local partnerships, with local communities, tidy towns committees, schools, development associations and residents' associations in housing estates that help to achieve a litter free environment, has been hampered by a lack of finance from the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government. Those associations have played an important role, with the assistance of FÁS community employment schemes, in improving the appearance of towns, villages and the countryside and I congratulate them. While much progress has been made, however, more needs to be done. What, however, did this Government do? It reduced community employment scheme numbers from 40,000 to less than 20,000.