Seán Kyne (Fine Gael)
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I thank the Cathaoirleach's office for choosing this Commencement matter and I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy O'Brien, to the Chamber. As everybody knows, community centres are important places for gatherings, sport, events, social occasions, fetes, sales of work and drama, to name but a few of the uses they have up and down the country. They range in size, depending on the size of a community. There are small community centres that are a gathering place for active retirement or old folks' groups in the morning and for children after school, and so on. There is a range of sizes, going all the way up to the big, spacious halls required for basketball and the likes.

In the past, particularly in rural areas, a community might have come together, in a kind of meitheal, gone through planning permission processes and started building a community centre over a number of years. As funds allowed, they completed a little more work and did work themselves through direct labour. In this day and age, that is more difficult with health and safety regulations, insurance issues, improved building standards, the Safe Pass required for building and the likes. There are a range of schemes across Government Departments for community projects, including the Leader programme in county areas, the CLÁR programme in certain parts of the country, the RAPID programme in certain areas of our cities and larger towns, sports capital grants, town and village schemes, the urban regeneration development fund, the rural regeneration development fund, local authority grants, An Roinn Turasóireachta, Cultúir, Ealaíon, Gaeltachta, Spóirt agus Meáin grants and Pobal grants.

However, for certain communities, like my own in Moycullen in County Galway, or Newcastle in Galway city, there is no one fund, of scale, that a community or, indeed, a local authority can apply to for a project that may cost in the order of €3 million to €5 million. For smaller projects, the Leader programme can step in to provide supports and one can build smaller centres. However, projects on the scale of €3 million to €5 million are of an insurmountable cost for a community to get involved with. It is vital that we develop a fund similar to the sports capital fund. It would make sense if local authorities could apply to such a fund for large-scale projects. The funding could be shared with the local authorities, or with the community providing a site or funds and so on, but it is absolutely vital.

There is a review of the national development plan, NDP, going on at the moment. I ask that the Minister of State brings this matter to the Minister for Rural and Community Development, Deputy Heather Humphreys. I will speak to her regarding it as well. I have spoken to the Tánaiste about the matter and raised it with the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Michael McGrath, during statements on the NDP last week.I suggest that we develop a fund similar to the sports capital fund. Communities would engage with their local authorities, which would then make applications. The fund would be used for refurbishments and modernisations, as well as new builds, of community centres up and down the country. Since there are fewer opportunities to find funding for large urban areas that are facing rapid development, I ask that this suggestion be considered. Will the Minister of State engage with the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, on whether this can be developed as part of the NDP review?

Joe O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Green Party)
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I thank the Senator for raising this important matter. Facilities like community centres form the core of many communities around the country and help to bring people of all backgrounds and ages together for many different types of activity and event. During normal times, they regularly have a positive impact on our communities, as all Senators would agree.

The possibility of a community centre capital programme similar to the sports capital programme that is run by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media has been mooted recently. The programme for Government includes a commitment to "the introduction of an annual small capital grants programme ... for the maintenance, improvement, and upkeep of community centres". I am committed to supporting the upkeep and development of community facilities and my Department has commenced the process of scoping the need for such an additional fund in the context of the funding that is already available for many of these centres.

The development and maintenance of community facilities, whether they are in State or community ownership, is currently funded from a range of sources across various Departments and Government agencies. For example, funding for community centres can be provided through the LEADER transitional programme. This programme, covering 2021 to 2022, will come into effect next week on 1 April for new project applications and will be delivered through local action groups around the country. The rural regeneration and development fund, RRDF, is also available within my Department and provides investment for ambitious projects in towns and villages with a population of less than 10,000 and their outlying areas. To date, the fund has provided €166 million to 139 projects across a range of projects nationwide, including community facilities. The urban regeneration and development fund, URDF, covering areas with larger populations, is available within the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, and further details are available from that Department. The town and village renewal scheme can also provide funding, and improvements to community centres have been funded through this scheme. Separately, the community enhancement programme provides capital grants, usually for minor works. Funding of €7 million was available through two rounds of this programme in 2020, with €5 million of this coming from the July stimulus package. All of this was targeted towards enhancing community facilities, including community centres and it is intended to run it again later in 2021.

I am conscious that we need to continue providing adequate support to important community facilities such as community centres, especially as we cope with the impacts of Covid-19, to ensure that new community centres can be developed where needed and that existing ones can be refurbished or upgraded where required.

Seán Kyne (Fine Gael)
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I thank the Minister of State for his reply. While I agree that a number of schemes provide relatively small amounts of funding for certain community centres, a large cohort of communities that are outside the remit of RAPID, CLÁR and local authorities have requirements for large community centres. There might be some crossover between community activities and sports, but there is no fund to which they can apply, and has been none in my time. Certain local authorities may be able to provide funding through their rates bases, as Galway City Council did in Cappagh and Ballinfoyle, but Galway County Council does not have the wherewithal to provide funding in the county. Applications in respect of Moycullen and Newcastle were made to the URDF and the RRDF but got nowhere. A specific fund for large community centre projects that cost €3 million to €5 million is needed. Will the Minister of State engage with the Minister on providing for same through the review of the NDP?

Joe O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Green Party)
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The Senator has my commitment that I will engage with the Minister on this matter.The Senator outlined the situation around community centres in general very well in his opening statement in that every community centre in the country probably has a different story behind how it came about, often with communities actually building them, and more recently communities themselves directly contributing, along with local authorities and sometimes central government. They are often anchored in a school, GAA club or local church. We will do a scoping exercise to see what is falling between the cracks because there are situations where pieces of infrastructure or concentrations of settlement may not have enough momentum to lever a proper community centre in its own right. It should also be noted that when new developments are planned and are being built, they should and generally do, but not always, include provision for a community centre. I accept the Senator's point that in many areas there are gaps.