Barry Ward
Dún Laoghaire · Fine Gael · Ireland
“I acknowledge all of the factors the Minister of State set out. I welcome them all and it is really important that we spread that message. The second part of the Minister of State's response is really important and that is the EU jobs part. I would not necessarily limit it just to the European Union.”
“Let us not abdicate responsibility for politically unpopular decisions, which are still the right decisions, made at European level with the involvement of Irish people.”
“There is little doubt about the positivity we associate with membership of the European Union. Some 82% of Irish people favour membership of the European Union, the highest rate of approval of any European state.”
“It is really important, not from the point of view of influence but from the point of view of presence, that there are Irish people around the table when decisions are being made so that the Irish perspective is understood and heard.”
“To look at it from a purely economic standpoint, the value of being part of the Single Market is enormous. In 1973, we imported €340 million more in goods than we exported. In recent times, we have had an export surplus. We have exported more than €53 billion more than we have imported.”
“As we hold the Presidency of the Council of the EU and are at the heart of Europe, leading the agenda and setting the tone in respect of our priorities during the Presidency, what is the Government doing to communicate to Irish people just how lucky we are to be part of the European Union?”
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“Since then, there has been a need for great investment in the harbour. It is primarily a leisure port, but this does not mean it does not have capacity to do that. The old ferry terminal building is vacant. More importantly, there is a pier there which is unused at the moment. It would require a bit of infrastructural investment to make the pier usable by the Naval Service. There is a real opportunity to make Dún Laoghaire Harbour that base. I do not know if plans have been finalised in this regard. I am asking the Minister of State for an update. I have been in touch with Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, which owns and operates Dún Laoghaire Harbour as one of its subsidiaries. I know there has been some discussion, but I am not sure what stage this is at.”
“It is not a busy commercial harbour, so it is not going to interfere with operations in the way it might in larger, busier harbours like Dublin Port, for example, or some of the other large commercial ports along the east coast. Dún Laoghaire is also close to Dublin, midway along the east coast, so it will be an easy point from which to service the whole of the Irish Sea. Equally, it is a very important opportunity to take what is a valuable heritage asset for the State and make it useful in serving the State. Dún Laoghaire Harbour is over 200 years old. It is an enormous Victorian harbour with lots of space. Over the past number of years, it has ceased its commercial function in many respects. The Stena Line had served as a link between Dún Laoghaire and Holyhead, but it ceased operations in 2015.”
“I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Troy, for coming to the House to deal with this important issue, which relates to the progression of a naval base at Dún Laoghaire. The Minister of State will be aware that in recent years Ireland has procured two coastal patrol vessels from the New Zealand navy. These are in the possession of the Irish Naval Service. One of them, the LÉ Aoibhinn , is currently docked in Dún Laoghaire Harbour. I understand that the plan is that they will be used as coastal patrol vessels in the Irish Sea and along the east coast. It seems that the perfect place to base them in those circumstances is Dún Laoghaire Harbour, which is accessible at all points of the tide. This means there is 24-hour access for ships like that in and out of Dún Laoghaire Harbour.”
“Can we please drive this so that, at the very minimum, every child who is graduating from a Gaelscoil into secondary school has the opportunity and chance to go to a Gaelcholáiste within a reasonably proximate area so they can continue that Gaeloideachas all the way through to university?”
“I look forward to the publication of the strategy and I appreciate the work the Minister is doing. The reality currently is that every child who leaves a Gaelscoil to go to a Gaelcholáiste does not have that choice. There are not enough Gaelcholáistí to accommodate the population coming out of Gaelscoileanna. Children who have been through the primary process as Gaeilge do not have the option to continue their education to university level as Gaeilge. Is the Minister satisfied that the resources are available? We hear that the teachers are not there, but that is something that can be addressed. Will the Minister put in place real incentives, whether that is grants for university education through Irish or tax incentives for teachers teaching trí mheán na Gaeilge or in Gaelcholáistí or Gaelscoileanna for that matter?”
“The danger is that the metric the Department currently uses only focuses on a narrow geographic area when, in fact, in the case of Cherrywood, with big transport links like the Luas and buses, children can travel to a Gaelcholáiste from households in a much wider geographic area. Will the survey account for that? Will the Minister ensure that parents from a wide area get the opportunity to make that choice as well?”
“I learned about the survey this morning. I welcome it. It is about giving parents the choice they need as to where their children are educated and in what circumstances they are educated. An issue I have raised with the Minister before, specifically in relation to a secondary school in Cherrywood in my constituency, is the way in which plebiscites are conducted and how the Department chooses whether there will be education through the medium of the Irish language. The community that wants Irish-language education is naturally and necessarily going to be more widely spread.”
“Particularly for schools in areas like my constituency, there is a danger that there might be feeling that there could be voluntary contributions that could assist schools in paying for things when the reality is they do not necessarily have access to resources that other schools do not have as well. I am concerned about the prioritisation of schools and whether there is a view that some schools do not need it which is not the case.”
“I acknowledge what the Minister said about the emergency works scheme and the minor works scheme. How does the Department prioritise one application over another? If a number of schools are asking for emergency works grants or minor works grants where they have a playground, a play facility or sports facility that is unusable, how does the Department prioritise one school over another? What can schools do to ensure they are on that list? We all recognise the importance of these facilities. I do not say this as a criticism but schools are put to the pin of their collar in terms of the resources that are available to them. They are being pulled every way.”
“The danger is that if it is not managed on an ongoing basis and, more importantly, if the schools do not have the resources to do it on an ongoing basis small things get left undone, they get worse and they get dangerous. No playground should end up unusable because of dangerous facilities and that stitch in time does indeed save nine. The way we give the stitch in time is to give the schools the resources in a timely and ready way.”
“I acknowledge the amount that has been spent on the schools building programme and on the provision of facilities. I also recognise what the Minister said about community facilities and the importance of the provision of sports facilities. I am looking even at a more micro level and I am thinking particularly of Loreto Primary School on Loreto Avenue, Dalkey. The principal, Fióna McKenna, has been in touch with me. The school is in a relatively small area with a playground on-site. It needs repairs to the playground and is having a huge difficulty getting the funding to do that. We all recognise the importance of play facilities and the important role that plays in a rounded education for any child.”
“My question is about the provision of funding for outdoor recreational facilities such as playgrounds and open space, but also provision for new ones and the maintenance of existing ones. What are the opportunities for primary schools in particular?”
“Of course, you can read briefing documents, but legislation should be accessible to people. They should not have to trawl through years and years of legislation to find out what it means.”
“The principal Act referred to in the Bill is the Electricity (Supply) (Amendment) Act 1954. As I understand it, that Act has been amended 20 times since then. When you pick up the Electricity (Supply) (Amendment) Bill 2025 and look at it, it is illegible. Section 2 will say that section 4 of the principal Act is amended by amending the reference to €12 billion to a reference to €17 billion. When you are reading the Bill, that means nothing. It means nothing in isolation. Section 4 has been amended over and over again. In order to understand what this Bill actually says, you have to go back and dig up 20 different pieces of legislation to actually understand section 4 of this new amendment Bill. Why do we not take the original section 4, repeal it or restate it in the new Bill so that somebody reading the legislation can know what it does?”
“To the greatest extent possible, they should be doing what they can to ensure they are using renewable electricity. I recognise that when they take electricity from the grid, it might be renewable electricity, but they are using electricity that could be used by somebody else, who is then relying on electricity that is not renewable. The greatest concern I have about data centres is that when they do not get enough electricity from the grid, they are relying on on-site diesel generators to feed their electricity needs. That has to be worst possible way to generate electricity, particularly on the small scale of a data centre. We need to take steps as a Government to ensure that data centres are ideally not doing that at all, but certainly to the very minimum extent possible. Finally, I will make a point on the construction of this Bill.”
“These mobile batteries would be there, having absorbed the excess energy available overnight. I do not know what plans the ESB has for large-scale long-duration electricity storage, but where we have good renewables, particularly in wind, we should be taking that energy and making sure it is there when there is a need for it on an ongoing basis. I would welcome any news the Minister of State might have on the plans within this infrastructure development to increase long-duration electricity storage. The other issue raised was data centres. I join with my colleagues in their concern about the extent that data centres are gobbling up electricity. I do not agree that we should have a moratorium, but I do not understand why every data centre in this country is not covered in solar panels to begin with.”
“That is not going to encourage people to use the facilities at their disposal to feed the electricity generated within their homes, farms, businesses or wherever it might be back into the network to contribute to the overall amount of electricity available. The other issue I have heard people refer to, including Deputy Gogarty, is long-duration energy storage. That is something that could definitely be a target of infrastructure spending. When we put the target together for the number of electric vehicles on the road, one of the big pluses for me was that we would have cars charging overnight, drawing electricity from the grid and essentially being a national battery for electricity that could then be used during the day when there is a greater demand on the grid.”
“The cost of electricity is something that I hope can be addressed when the infrastructural deficit is addressed by this investment. Mention has also been made of microgeneration, something that Ireland has been absolutely behind the curve on. Households all over this country are willing to use solar panels or other ways of microgeneration including geothermal, but they are not facilitated by the network to do that in real terms. While it may be technically possible to put electricity back into the grid, there is no real incentive to do it. The unit price that a householder gets for putting it back is negligible even compared with the wholesale price of electricity.”
“In fact, with 40% of our electricity generation coming from renewables, I do not understand why we have not dealt with that problem. We talk about it in the context of the budget and whether or not we should have targeted measures or ongoing supports. Leaving that debate entirely to one side, there is a simple solution to this, and it is to tackle the energy companies about the cost of electricity. It is unjustifiable. Maybe I do not understand and there may be a perfectly good reason, but I have not heard it yet. In the absence of such a reason, we should be going back to the CRU and asking it to explain why it has allowed electricity prices to become as inflated as they have, particularly in the context of our European neighbours. I do not really understand why we have allowed ourselves to become an outlier in that regard.”
“It is that simple. This is an absolutely necessary measure to allow the ESB to put in place the electricity infrastructure that is going to allow houses to come on stream faster and across the whole country. If there was no other reason to welcome this Bill, that would be a good reason to welcome it. I hope the ESB and EirGrid will be able to do that as fast as possible. I listened to the debate and heard the criticism of, for example, electricity prices. I join with those Deputies. I do not understand why the Commission for Regulation of Utilities has allowed electricity prices to go up as far as they have. I understand there was a peak in generation costs at the time of the outbreak of the Ukraine war. That is no longer there.”
“I welcome this Bill. It is a hugely important piece of infrastructural progress. I welcome the fact it has come to us as quickly as it has, making good on a commitment in the programme for Government. I recognise that the Bills Office and the Minister of State’s Department turned it around in quite a short period of time. I also recognise the pre-legislative scrutiny done by my party colleague Deputy Naoise Ó Muirí and his committee. I welcome the fact the Bill has progressed quickly and is here. It does some important things. I have listened to the debate and heard the criticism from many colleagues, but let us get down to brass tacks. This Bill is about providing the electricity infrastructure that we need to build houses to start to erode the deficit in housing provision. If we do not do this, we will not be able to do it.”
“I look forward to that as well. One of the important things we will look at during our Presidency is the multi-annual financial framework, a really important body of work to be done during the Presidency. Are there any specific preparations for that? Second, as regards the enlargement agenda, there are many accession countries looking to become part of the European Union. Many of them feel that the enlargement process by the Commission has somewhat stalled. I know the Commission would not agree with that terminology, but the reality is that we have not had an accession since 2013. Many countries - I am thinking particularly of places like Montenegro - are very advanced in their negotiations and ready to do a deal. Will there be a possibility for us to be prepared to do that deal during our Presidency?”
“What steps will we take to ensure that their teachers know about it, that they have an opportunity to feed into it and that their ideas are included in the considerations for those priorities as well as the cultural agenda that we will have during the second six months of next year?”
“We have a very good history of having strong, well-organised and productive Presidencies in this country, and I look forward to the same thing next year. I particularly welcome what the Tánaiste has said about the public consultation around the priorities for the Presidency. That is very welcome and very important. Could he give us details of how the public will have an opportunity to contribute to that? Obviously, it will be done at national level, but will it be done also in schools, for example? Many children around the country will be seeing an Irish Presidency for the first time.”
“It is irresponsible and unfair to people who elected councillors to Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council over successive elections and who were in favour of this that it has simply been disregarded. It is not the Minister of State's fault. I recognise that but I am frustrated about it.”
“It formed part of our development plans, and over successive plans, officials in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown and elsewhere have eroded its legitimacy and taken it out through inaction, objection and obfuscation, and they have never said why. They have never given a good reason it cannot go ahead, apart from some problems, every one of which could be overcome. When Covid hit, one single acting director of services in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council built the whole of that coastal mobility route without consultation with anyone. If we want to talk about democratic deficits, that is one. If one official can make that decision after decades of locally elected representatives trying to do the same thing, where is the state of our local democracy? The S2S is outside the DART line but it has been written out by officialdom.”
“I agree with all of that. Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council has done great work in putting in place what it calls the coastal mobility route, which runs inside the DART line. It is a fantastic facility. It faced a lot of opposition at the time but it is great. However, it is not the S2S. Somehow, there is this decision at local level, which has no democratic legitimacy whatsoever because it is totally contrary to what democratically elected people actually asked for and want, that the S2S is inside the DART line. I want to know where elected people made this decision. They did not make this decision. When I went up to the ECRIPP consultation, I met with officials and engineers from Iarnród Éireann and it was said that the S2S was essentially written out of the plans.”
“In the Minister of State's response, he said the "Sutton to Sandycove cycleway, also commonly referred to as the east cost trail". It is not. They are different things. This is the frustrating thing I am dealing with in regard to management at local level, this notion that they are the same thing. They are not. The east coast trail, as the Minister of State has just described, comes inside the DART lane at Merrion Gates. When cyclist come over the Merrion Gates and onto Merrion Road, they are battling with buses, cars and all the other traffic. The S2S is a coastal cycleway and promenade outside the DART line. There are none of the dangers associated with wrestling with traffic, and we do not have to do that. All of the things the Minister of State has set out there with regard to trying to avoid private car use and all the rest is great.”
“Nobody has a problem with that, but those responsible for ECRIPP have proceeded to build this wall. This was the greatest opportunity to build the S2S on top. The original DART wall is 8 m wide. Tell me there is not space there to have a cycleway and a footpath. Instead, they are building a wall that is not going to facilitate it. The consultation is nil from the point of view of the things people have said about what should happen, and they are going to spend millions of euro building a wall that does not even facilitate a basic community facility that would benefit us all. I want to know why that facility cannot be built. Nobody can tell me. It does not make sense and it is disregarding what people want in the area.”
“Nobody can tell me where the boundary actually is. The other problem is that you cannot build it because it is in the curtilage of an SPA, but how do we even flipping know where that is? Nobody can tell me. Two weeks ago I went to an east coast railway infrastructure protection projects, ECRIPP, consultation in the Royal Marine Hotel in Dún Laoghaire, where Iarnród Éireann showed us the plans it has to rebuild the DART wall. The Dublin to Kingstown railway, built in 1834, crossed the sands, created a lagoon at Boosterstown and created Blackrock Park. Ultimately, it also created a relatively straight line along there. The wall is now ageing, however, and in bad weather - hurricanes, low pressure and high tides - the wall is overtopped by the sea, so they have to build it up.”
“The notion that a cycleway and a walkway along the side of the DART line would interfere with those birds roosting is absolute nonsense. The thing that really frustrates me, though, is that it was never substantiated by the NPWS. It just made this vague assertion that there was a problem and it was never backed up. When the then Minister, John Gormley, was in the Department of the environment, he declared Dublin Bay to be an special area of conservation, SAC, and a special protection area, SPA. I do not have a problem with that. What they did in the Custom House, however, was get a big map and a marker and draw the outline of the SPA and the SAC. We have no notion of where the boundary relating to both is because when you get down to ground level, the marker, the actual boundary, is several metres wide.”
“Some councillors in Dún Laoghaire were against it, but the vast majority of us were for it. In fact, I formed a committee with Dublin City Council exceptionally under the Local Government Act to progress this and we still did not get anywhere, notwithstanding commitments from the management in Dún Laoghaire that we would have environmental impact studies, etc. The main stumbling block from the beginning was a ruling or a decision from the National Parks and Wildlife Service, NPWS, that this would affect birds roosting on Sandymount Strand or Booterstown Strand, the part of Dublin Bay that dries out at low tide, where birds do land. People walk their dogs there, the dogs run at the birds, the birds fly up and then they land again when the dogs have passed.”
“We are talking about a combined cycleway and promenade outside the DART line around Dublin Bay, so you have no traffic lights and no interaction with cars, it is safe, it is a direct route for commuters in and out of town, it is a healthy place for people to enjoy recreation, it would be a tourist attraction and it is something that exists in all kinds of other cities around Europe. Yet we do not have it in Dublin, and the question is why we do not have it. I do not know the answer to that because it makes absolutely no sense that we do not have it. During my time on the council and in the Seanad, I argued for this to happen. It is through a combination of bureaucratic laziness and myopia that it has not happened. It is enormously frustrating. There is almost universal support for this.”
“I wish to raise the S2S, which is a coastal promenade and cycleway around Dublin Bay, from Sutton to Sandycove, which is where the name comes from. I am particularly concerned about the bit between Merrion Gates and Dún Laoghaire Harbour. I was first elected to Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council in 2009, but before I was ever elected I was in favour of this plan. It existed long before I ever got involved. I credit people like Michael Collins in Blackrock who have kept this idea alive. It has been singularly the most frustrating thing I have had to deal with as a politician at any level because this is a universally supported measure. It makes perfect sense on so many different levels.”
“Can the Minister inform us on that before we vote on Second Stage, if that is what it comes to, in relation to this legislation? As I said, the national training fund is a hugely important instrument. It benefits all the people on this island. Perhaps more importantly, as a macro instrument, it is of enormous benefit to our economy. The investment in the national training fund is investment in our people, our human resources and our economy. I absolutely welcome it. I do not want to frustrate the Bill, but I would be very grateful if the Minister could address some of the points I raised.”
“I have a concern that there is no guarantee in this legislation. I am not sure what consultation has been carried out with the stakeholders who will be affected by this. What do they have to say about that? Do they share those concerns? Are they happy that the guarantees are there to ensure the NTF will not be - I am slow to use the word "misused" because I do not think anybody intends to do that - used in an entirely different way from how it was envisaged 25 years ago when it was first put in place and how it has been expanded since then? What have those stakeholders got to say about this legislation? Are they in favour of this extension or expansion of the powers and the purposes for which the NTF can be spent? Do they have any concerns about it? What consultations have taken place with those stakeholders?”
“For ordinary citizens, we are just distancing them further from what the law actually says, and making it more difficult for them to have access to what the law actually says or interpret what the legislation is supposed to do. As I said, it is a missed opportunity. What I really want to say in the context of this Second Stage debate is that while I acknowledge the bona fides of the Government and the Ministers responsible for this legislation, and I acknowledge that they are trying to broaden the scope of the NTF so that it can be used for the things it needs to be used for - I do not have an objection to any of that - I have a concern with the way it is being done. I have a concern that we cannot guarantee that in the future it will not be misused by another Minister in the Department of higher and further education.”
“It would have been really easy to repeal section 7 and restate it. The original section 7 even as amended only runs to five subsections. It is not a long section either. It would be really easy to simply repeal it and restate it in this Bill, which would make this legislation much more readable and accessible to ordinary citizens than what is being done here. Time and again within this Legislature, we miss the opportunity to do that. We expect people to go and pick up multiple pieces of legislation to find out what the law actually says. I say that as a lawyer who reads legislation all the time. It is painful for me to have to do it. I do it regularly, and I understand how to do it.”
“I do not have a problem with that per se , but why not take section 7, which in and of itself is not a long section - it has only been amended once in 2013 - and repeal it and restate it in the Bill? The reality is that anybody coming to read this Bill or this Act when it becomes law has to refer to another piece of legislation to have any understanding of what it is doing. In this House, we have developed a practice over the last number of years - over generations, even - of passing Bills that cannot be read in isolation. Amending Bills simply tell us that we are inserting a new subparagraph or paragraph into a section, and the person reading the Act has no idea what it does without going to find the National Training Fund Act 2000, for example, and finding out exactly what it does. We do not need to do that.”
“There is, in fact, a problem with the removal of a Portakabin from the site that can no longer be used because the roof has fallen in. Is that what is envisaged? Is that the kind of thing that could be covered by this legislation? It is not entirely clear to me, and I would be grateful for or some explanation or some future assurances in relation to how this legislation will operate, if and when it passes. This is one of the difficulties, and I am afraid I say this quite regularly about legislation, particularly legislation that comes through this House. When we look at the legislation we are being asked to pass, even though it only has two sections and is a one-page Bill, in essence, we see that it proposes to insert a new paragraph (2)( b ) into section 7 of the 2000 Act.”
“The Minister, Deputy Lawless, was good enough to come out to the community training centre in Dún Laoghaire a number of weeks ago, and he met me and his party colleague there. There is capital investment required there. Perhaps we could be given an undertaking that if this legislation passes into law, some of the money from the NTF would be usable to help to repair, for example, really important premises for providing services for local people in Dún Laoghaire and the wider south Dublin area, if that is what is intended. I am not talking about the acquisition of buildings that are already owned. I am talking about buildings where the roofs have fallen in, for example, because of a lack of maintenance over time or where equipment has been damaged or where there are problems with dampness.”
“I recognise entirely that is not the intention of this Bill. I recognise that the Minister and Minister of State responsible in the Department, both of whom have been present for this debate, do not intend to do that and that is not what they are trying to do. My concern is that the Bill does not tell us that and we, as a Legislature, are handing over to the executive the power to use a fund that we have provided for in the law for 25 years now and providing a way for it - essentially placing it into its hands and its trust - to spend that on things so far beyond what it was originally envisaged it would be used for. That has to be a cause for concern. I will say one thing about the acquisition of real estate.”
“I am slightly concerned, to be perfectly honest, that the new paragraph 2(b) will give a much wider unrestricted, unfettered and uncontrolled use for the fund beyond what it was envisaged to be used for. The Government needs to provide assurances to the House in that regard and tell us why that is not going to happen or why it cannot happen. It is also brought forward in isolation, without, as I said, an exploration of what other aspects could have been used to expand the remit of the fund. What are the other areas where, for example, needs that have been identified could be satisfied by the fund? That examination is absent from the Bill. The real danger is that the fund ends up being used as a short-term funding bridge when adequate funding is not available for further education.”
“We do not know whether future Ministers might use the provisions of the new section 7(2)(b) to expand and use the fund for the acquisition of buildings, premises and things like that which go well beyond what was originally envisaged in 2000, the amendment in 2013 by the Further Education and Training Act or, indeed, the results of the Cassells review in 2016. What assurances can we have that this is not going to be misused? I do not mean that in any nefarious away or to cast aspersions on anyone. What assurances do we have that the fund will not now become a fund for acquiring buildings, for example? That is not what it was ever intended for, and is not what section 7 of the 2000 Act or any of the subsequent amendments envisaged.”
“I do not have a problem with the expansion of the remit of the fund and what can be used for. In the context of capital expenditure, it is definitely good that there would be an opportunity to purchase equipment and the construction of certain premises to deal with things. The real concern I have with this short Bill is that it massively widens the scope of the fund without putting any strictures or controls on that. I have listened to the Minister of State. I understand there is an undertaking in that regard and it will not be used to buy lots of buildings and things like that, and it should not be. I accept the bona fides of the Minister and Government in that regard. I would have appreciated a recommitment to that but the reality is that the Government will not be in place and the Minister will not be in the job forever.”
“I am not opposed to the notion of capital investment but we should bear in mind that the original section in the 2000 Act sets out very clearly that there is a relatively limited scope for the fund, namely to raise the skills of those in employment, provide training for those who wish to acquire skills for the purpose of taking up employment and provide information in relation to existing or likely future requirements for schools in the economy. That is set out in section 7(2)(a) to (c), inclusive. The Bill will add to that a new paragraph 2(b) which, in essence, states that, whatever we say elsewhere, in this section for the purposes of expending the fund, we can also include the acquisition of lands, premises, furniture or equipment or the upgrading, construction or reconstruction, including repair and maintenance, of premises.”
“I very much welcome the presence of the National Training Fund. It is important. In the aftermath of the Cassells review in 2016, the identification of the need for an extra billion euro per annum in funding for higher education by 2030 is laudable and something we should strive for. I will be honest with the Minister of State. I am a little bit disappointed by the Bill. It is clearly short. I expected there to be a greater exploration of the manner in which we can expand the remit of the national training fund, what could be done in that area and how it could be expanded so that it covers other areas. What we got was a Bill that does one thing, namely expands the National Training Fund to allow it to include real estate and other capital investment.”
“Is there any path to provide that certainty, whether through multi-annual funding or through the association? Is there no pathway to give them certainty on what might be available to run the programmes they run?”
“I appreciate what the Minister has said. I understand the importance of making sure the money is spent correctly and appropriately. Nobody has any difficulty with that. I also appreciate what he said about the value of the associations and the value of an association that can act as an umbrella body. My suggestion is that where we provide multi-annual funding for various organisations in other areas of the budget, is it not open to us to make that multi-annual funding available to a particular association so that they might have some certainty for the programmes they offer, recognising the value of men's sheds to particular communities and what they do for people throughout this country, in every constituency represented in this House?”
“They can do so much more if they have certainty about what funding is available to them. Will the Minister outline the reasons that cannot be done?”