Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)
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123. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government his views on the funding for Volunteer Ireland and the Fingal volunteer centre for 2014; and if he will give an assurance that there will be no reduction in the budget. [11020/14]

Phil Hogan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael)
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The Government continues to advance a range of measures that support volunteering and active citizenship and my Department funds a network of twenty one Volunteer Centres, including Fingal Volunteer Centre. The centres act as ‘brokers’ between potential volunteers and organisations seeking volunteers. The centres are linked by a common database and a common best practice approach. They also work with organisations to develop their volunteer management capacity and facilitate Garda vetting for smaller organisations. My Department also provides funding to Volunteer Ireland, the national volunteer development agency. The focus of Volunteer Ireland is to create an enabling environment for volunteering, to develop an ethos of volunteerism across all sectors of society and to be an independent and legitimate voice for volunteering. While there are encouraging signs of improvement in the economic outlook, difficult decisions continue to be necessary, allocations in most expenditure programmes remain constrained for 2014 and, like other Departments, my Department’s budget has been reduced for 2014. My primary concern has been to make every effort to ensure that the daily front-line services, including Volunteer Ireland and volunteer centres, provided with funding from my Department, are protected to the greatest extent possible. In this regard I have kept the reductions, (approximately 5%) to both Volunteer Ireland and Volunteer Centres to a minimum and they have been notified recently of their funding allocations for 2014.