Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

Funnily enough, I do not argue with much of the spirit or detail of the Senator's contribution. While I do not blame the board, one of the problems with the current arrangement was that it placed a very open advertisement. When one places an open advertisement, one inevitably receives a great number of applications. If we had left the application period open for another three months, we would probably have received requests for €1 billion in grants of all sizes. A great many people put a great deal of time into the application process but very few of them could mathematically have been successful as the level of grant disbursement required in one year would have exceeded the total fund.

We decided early on that we would allow for the dispersal of a modest amount of the fund every year. As there was no disbursement last year, the spend of €60 million should be considered as €30 million per annum. As applications for a total of €300 million were made, only one in ten applicants can be successful. Most community groups are tired of spending endless time and wasting consultants' time making up great plans and applying to find their chances of succeeding, irrespective of what criteria are in place, are negligible. I claim responsibility for having changed three fundamental aspects of the plan from the original provisions. In the context of social and economic deprivation, we put in a reference to CLÁR and RAPID. We also included a particular reference to RAPID in the context of education. We have also made particular reference to those who suffer the most severe disabilities. The changes were made transparently and I will stand here openly and defend them. I made the changes because the RAPID areas are objectively the most deprived and CLÁR areas the most isolated while people with the most severe disabilities should have first call on the money.

Senator Ryan does me an injustice. I have discussed the proposed methodologies I intend to pursue with the implementation teams in the RAPID areas whose members feel a scatter-gun approach is currently in place. Early in this process, the Senator's colleague, Deputy O'Shea, asked in the Dáil whether the area implementation teams which have spent years drawing up plans for their own RAPID areas had any input into the evaluation of applications under the current system. The answer is "No" as the dormant accounts disbursement board and the mechanism we put in place——