Emer Currie (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Today I want to talk about problems facing community centres in Dublin West although I imagine there are community centres all over the country that are facing the same problems. I am referring to centres that are not owned by local authorities but are owned by the community and which need work done on them. Such work can include fire safety works, as is the case in Huntstown and Hartstown community centres. This work must be undertaken because both centres are home to childcare facilities and pre-schools but the money is not there to do it. We are talking here about six figure sums for the work that is needed but it is not realistic to expect the community centres to rely entirely on the local community to pay for that work.

The programme for Government, I am glad to say, references small-scale funding for community centres but I urge the Government not to underestimate the size of the fund required, the scale of the works that are required and the number of community centres that need funding.If I am talking about two in my area, and a third community centre that is owned by the community, then let us multiply that by however many to get to where we need to be. These are community centres and I have a list of services here for Huntstown, including The Daughters of Charity, the Afterschool Academy, football, Beavers, Foróige, the Garda youth diversion project, Alcoholics Anonymous, the Dyslexia Dublin 15 support group for parents, the Fingal integration women's forum, and Siel Bleu. This is the essence of community. Whether or not the local authorities own them, we need to make sure that they are invested in and the money is there to bring them up to standard.