Debate contribution: EU Funding for the Community and Voluntary Sector

Debate contribution by Ms Sinéad McLaughlin on 9 September 2024.

MLA

Ms Sinéad McLaughlin

Party at the time

Social Democratic and Labour Party

Date

9 September 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

EU Funding for the Community and Voluntary Sector

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4511864

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I welcome the motion on the future of the UK Shared Prosperity Fund. The delivery of that fund and the failure to replace the ESF was, and remains, a pressing challenge in all our communities across Northern Ireland. Other Members have outlined the failures of the delivery of the UK SPF here and how the moneys provided by it in the first place fell far, far short of those funds provided under the European Union. For many years, through our membership of the European Union, the ESF was the lifeblood of our communities, sustaining projects and organisations that quickly became part of the core public service provision. In Derry, we saw at first hand the damage caused by the removal of the European funding. It has ripped away from our city, and from such organisations as the Women's Centre Derry and the Derry Youth and Community Workshop, their people, their skills and the community service that goes with them. Those organisations, and many, many more across the North, were failed by the British Government as well as by the dysfunctional politics here in Stormont. Most of all, they were failed by the decision to leave the European Union. After that vote, the British Government had time to put in place a replacement scheme that was fit for purpose. I know that many of us in the Chamber lobbied hard for the SPF to be delivered in a way that would work for Northern Ireland, but we were unsuccessful. The failure of the Government to align the fund with our priorities, and to deliver it over the heads of the people here, was inexcusable, and its centralised management by Whitehall was totally misguided. The levelling up White Paper states:

"Levelling Up will only be successful if local actors are empowered to develop solutions that work for their communities".

It is clear that, through the SPF, where the previous Government promised to level up, they actually levelled down, and communities paid the price. My community has paid that price. On that aspect, I therefore agree with the motion and with the call from the Member for South Down Diane Forsythe:

"future programmes must be developed with due regard to the Executive's agreed priorities, and with meaningful input from local Ministers".

I remind the Member that that would have been a lot easier if we had had an Executive in place. We cannot ignore that. Hearing from the parties that collapsed Stormont that we need proper input from Ministers into the scheme is simply a bit farcical, particularly when it comes to this issue, because they literally left the community organisations to fend for themselves for years, out in the cold, without a Government. Lessons must be learned, but one of the lessons should surely be that reform is needed to end the cycle of collapse and veto here. Organisations now face yet another cliff edge, and, thanks to those various failures, they have lost faith in the ability of the British Government to protect them from falling off such a cliff. I hope that the Labour Government can prove them wrong. In a letter to me, the then shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Hilary Benn, said that he was:

“all too aware of the consequences of the loss of European funding, and of the promise that the Government made — broken so far — that areas would not lose out.”

Now is the chance for his Government to recognise that challenge and put it right. Today is a chance for all of us to call on the Government to deliver clarity for those organisations. Finally, it is important to state two facts about our responsibilities in this Building, regardless of any progress that is made in influencing the British Government. First, it was not only the British Government that defunded projects that previously operated under European funding. Departments provided match funding to those projects. Since 2016-17, the Executive paid statutory national match funding that amounted to tens of millions of pounds. When European funding disappeared, so did funding from our Departments. That cannot be forgotten. Secondly, although the implementation of the levelling-up agenda failed, the scheme's core principle — no one should be limited by geography — is right. We need our own levelling-up agenda in this Government. That is called regional balance. The Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 is one example —

— of legislation that we should look at when addressing regional imbalances in Northern Ireland.

748 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 11:01 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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