Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats)
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581. To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources if he will report on the operation of the e-benefit programme; the total funding provided each year since 2008 by county; the sum allocated to each group per year; the new selection criteria for the 2017 digital skills for citizens grant scheme; the number of successful and unsuccessful applications, by county, in 2017; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [3195/17]

Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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My Department’s BenefIT Programme, which operated between 2008 and mid-2016, comprised of four consecutive schemes designed to address the basic digital literacy needs of citizens, thereby removing a key barrier to citizen engagement with the internet.  Under the BenefIT Programme, over 160,000 training places were provided to citizens in more than 600 locations nationwide, at a cost of €8.4m. The most recent programme, BenefIT 4, funded 22 community, voluntary and not-for-profit organisations to provide skills training, along with 23 pilot community-based projects with various objectives.

Financial information relating to the BenefIT Programme is held by the Department in respect of each organisation grant aided, and is not readily available at a County level. Relevant figures in respect of the years 2013 – 2016 are set out in the following Table, while details in relation to the years 2008 – 2012 are being compiled and will be forwarded to the Deputy as soon as possible.

On 18 November 2016, I issued an invitation to community, voluntary and not-for-profit organisations to apply for grant assistance under the Digital Skills for Citizens Grant Scheme which replaced the BenefIT Programme. The scheme’s Statement of Requirementsspecified the relevant qualification and award criteria, and is available on my Department’s website at www.dccae.gov.ie. In terms of eligibility, organisations had to meet the following minimum requirements:

- a minimum annual turnover of €100,000

- experience of having satisfactorily managed a project of a similar scale within the past 5 years.

Eligible organisations were assessed in terms of a published marking scheme in respect of the following headings:

- numbers of citizens to be trained, with a minimum threshold of 1,000

- detailed training proposal, and

- cost per trainee.

Overall, 29 applications were received in response to the competitive call for proposals, of which 22 organisations were eligible to be evaluated. The eligible applications comprised proposals to train a total of 68,108 citizens, at a cost of €5.87m per annum.  The financial allocation available to fund the scheme in 2017 amounted to some €2.2m.

Following the evaluation process carried out by my officials, 15 organisations were offered grant funding to provide classroom training, free of charge, to 25,761 citizens, with a geographic spread of training, across every County in the country.  Initial payments made in 2016 to the 15 successful organisations, in accordance with the funding arrangements and provisions of the respective grant agreements, are outlined in the following Table. Details of the training classes which are being made available under this tranche of grant funding will be published on my Department’s website as soon as schedules have been finalised. Financial records relating to the scheme will be held at both an organisation and county level.