Charles Flanagan (Laois-Offaly, Fine Gael)
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Question 421: To ask the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform the closed circuit television grant aid system for community groups and organisations which has been offered by his Department each year for the past five years; the funding allocation each year for the past five years; and the progress on plans to roll out CCTV projects. [15484/09]

Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)
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The Community-based CCTV Scheme was launched in 2005 to provide financial assistance to qualifying local organisations towards meeting the capital costs associated with establishing a community CCTV system. Pobal has been engaged to administer the Scheme on behalf of my Department. Two types of grant have been made available under the scheme. Substantive grants of up to €100,000 have been made available from my Department with the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs providing matching funding for successful applications from RAPID areas. Pre-development grants of up to €5,000 have also been made available to assist local communities to develop substantive proposals in their areas.

Two major rounds of the scheme were advertised in 2005/2006 and 2007 with a total of 13 and 30 substantive schemes respectively approved for funding. A further 2 schemes under the Limerick Regeneration programme were approved in 2008. In addition, 54 schemes were awarded pre-development grants over the same period. The annual financial allocation for CCTV includes both the Community and Garda schemes and is not recorded separately. Expenditure on the Community schemes is dependent on progress on implementation by the various communities with staged payments made as appropriate. Accordingly, the funding allocation per annum requested by the Deputy is not readily available and in any event, would not be meaningful, as the award of funds is directly linked to the dates the various rounds of the schemes were announced.

However, expenditure (on both substantive and pre-development grants) by my Department for each of the years since grants have been approved is set-out in the table below. To date, a total of 20 substantive schemes have been installed and are operational with the remaining 25 schemes at various stages of implementation. Many of these are at an advanced stage with part payments already made.

Any further plans for extension of CCTV are dependent on a number of factors including the availability of funding, progression of the schemes already grant aided and overall policy considerations.