Matt Shanahan urges targeted support for small groups and safety

Minister, I'm deputising for a colleague today at short notice, so I'll apologise in advance if I'm not fully au fait with your brief, if you please. Just in terms of the towns and villages funding scheme, I think everybody would agree it's a great opportunity to develop towns and city, but I wonder about the idea of drawing up the strategic plans around it, particularly for community groups, and I'm wondering whether your office considered providing funding through maybe the leader or local area partnership groups to bring in strategic mentors to write these plans and applications. I have some experience in this area before and I think it can be difficult to navigate and also a large amount of the time it can be difficult to get the key points across, so possibly that's something you might have a look at. Just to reflect what one of my other colleagues said earlier about community organisations, one of our colleagues in the regional group received an email from the Drum Heritage Group in Roscommon, a very small heritage visitor centre minister, where they flagged that their operating costs were rising by €6,000 taken up with insurance, electricity and additional maintenance. Now there's no grant aid on offer to a grouping like that and they had been on to your department, but as tourism cultural centres, they don't basically qualify. Is there any way these are very important, as you know Minister, very important initiatives in small rural towns and it's a pity that they're left out of some opportunity to get support. Just in terms of the stability fund, and as I say everybody welcomes that, but I noticed that the fund is now closed, I think since sometime the 20th of May, a thousand applications were received and yet there's 10,000 registered charities in Ireland, and I know now the fund is focusing on health and wellbeing, and obviously is being administered through your own public DOH and the Department of Children, but it was based on a 25% income loss, essentially, so people are effectively saying they're not in a position to raise money with the COVID situation, but I'm wondering was there any opportunity to accommodate organisations who've seen a rise in expenditure, so I'm thinking of people who are basically facilitating travel in particular, where they now have minibuses, where they have to take one patient at a time, I think there were some organisations that felt closed out, and the other thing I would ask, I would think that 10% of all the charities applying to that fund, I wonder is the application process again too onerous, too rigorous, and may be difficult, and if you have had a chance to possibly have a look at that again if you please. Just slightly out of, pardon the pun out of your depth, but in terms of schools and community safety, the recent tragedies around the country and indeed the near misses of the last week, could we look again at some specific initiative to community and schools safety, water safety in particular, to do with child's and children's inflatables and signage around inland waterways, so that I think it's a very important thing and unfortunately it has come into sharp relief in the last few weeks. Just beyond that, your comments regarding the grant scheme for refurbishment of urban properties and the derelict property site tax. I was on council in Waterford for a period of just over 13 months and we have obviously problems in both areas there, I support your comments there Minister, but again how would you see that scheme, particularly the grant scheme for the refurbishment of urban properties, how would that be administered? And again I think the problem here is trying to simplify the access ways and to simplify the application process, so maybe those would keep me going for a little bit, thank you. Thank you, thank you Deputy. I just want to say, in relation to the challenge of the scheme, this time I'm looking at the scheme in relation particularly as opposed to social distancing and I'm looking at public realms where give people an opportunity now that they're going to have to be social distancing, we're going to have to bring in different rules and regulations, but it's going to be, I've already asked the local authorities when they're bringing in their submissions and their plans that they would have this in mind, you raised an issue there in relation to the stability package and you know you're quite correct, we had a number of applications, we had it up for different groups, met different applications in different ways and public at the present are streamlining these applications because I have to be fair to everybody, the guidelines have to be the same for everybody and I have to make sure that whatever application comes in that all applications are due to adjudication fairly, Pablo will make the recommendations, I will make the decisions at the end, but what I don't want with this fund is, I don't want groups that have funding, that have savings and have funding, I want to try and target the groups that are really, really, really in need of funding and particularly anyone that has dealt with the frontline services, we have to give them an opportunity like take the meals and wheels and services like that, that continued through this crisis, who actually took on extra clientele, who had to go out there and work very hard with the same limited resources that they had and then their funding to be curtailed, so I'm looking at that. Also you talked about, particularly about some safety aspects outside schools and I'll talk about water safety, I'll try the two of them in together. Already I have a scheme under the CLAR programme and has been a very, very successful scheme and under the CLAR programme I've had a scheme there for the last number of years and it was one that I reintroduced and it has worked very well in relation to particularly schools where they can make an application under CLAR to make their schools safe because as you know and I know the amount of accidents that happened outside schools over the years, I, you know, get funding for signage, you know, to give warning signs, we give funding even to build safer care parks, to make sure that children are safe going in and out of school and that programme has worked very, very well and I have to say that that there has been more applications than funding but I continued and again this year I will continue that because it is a very, very important programme. Water safety is also under my department and you know, not quite but nearly as many people I suppose die every year in relation to water accidents, it's the same as road accidents and I must say that the water, Irish, it used to be Irish water, it's water safety now. I had to change the name because they were getting, inundated recall, they thought that we're Irish water so we actually had to change their name and I had to change about stature which I did to water safety and they do a very good job and I have to say they, they, they, they have run a number of safety campaigns and even previous to this weekend they have ran, they have ran a lot of, you know, ads and advertisements and they're out there but I have to say to people particularly from here on in, you know, as we're, I suppose they're there and we, the local authorities are actually provide the people that look after our beaches, they're only there from part-time in June up to September and people have to be very careful, they have to, particularly if the signage and there's notifications there, they have to obey the warnings because water is very, very, very dangerous and as Deputy Welch raised earlier we had a very serious tragedy in our own county there and I would again to condone my condolence with that family, it's very tragic so all I can say is that, that Water Safety Ireland are doing a good job, have given them a bit extra funding, they've done some very good strategies and, you know, they, they're, they're asking people, you know, to be careful, to heed the signage, to do what they're told and, you know, but they, they, they, they have certainly do the job that, that, that I have given them the role and I know that they will have a further campaign over the next number of weeks to warn people, in particular, when the fine weather comes, when the fine weather comes, you know, people will want an action of, if they, they, they want to get the beaches, they want to get to water, they want to be able to, to use the facilities that we have. Thank you. Just, if I could just add one thing to that for here, just the other remit ministers in terms of the outdoor recreation infrastructure and I think specifically the brief there is around cycleways and walkways, and I may be on the wrong point here but I'm just wondering again about waterways and thinking in Waterford in particular, we had two initiatives there, one around a blue way and another in terms of trying to amalgamate old houses and river walks and I think this is a future area for tourism around the country that we should build a separate initiative about and perhaps maybe that's something somebody yourself again or someone else in your stead might take that on also. Yes, you're quite correct, the outdoor recreation scheme and I have done and I've worked with Waterways Ireland and I must compliment them, they have done some fantastic projects in Leitrim and on the Bartha counties and we have done a collaboration between both of us and I must say that it has worked out very, very well. The outdoor recreation scheme is probably a fantastic scheme, you know, it really is. People talk particularly in the last few weeks and I know people have been restricted to the five kilometres and the two kilometres but the one thing that came into being that worked very well over the last few weeks and the amount of people and I haven't met many people but anyone that I have mentioned getting emails and different things from people is they say well done to the government in relation to the schemes and the walkways and the provisions that we have provided. There's some fantastic walks all over the country, the outdoor recreation scheme, we have put substantial funding into every county in the country, it has worked out very well, there's some local authorities are fantastic, they're drawn on that funding all the time and their walks and the schemes that we have in place and the one thing we must remember, they're free, they're actually free. People can go out and get the fresh air and the air free.