Debate contribution: EU Funding for the Community and Voluntary Sector

Debate contribution by Ms Kellie Armstrong on 9 September 2024.

MLA

Ms Kellie Armstrong

Party at the time

Alliance 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 4511884

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I thank Colm Gildernew from Sinn Féin for proposing the motion and Diane Forsythe for tabling the amendment. To be honest, I support both, but I will support the amendment, because it names a Minister and asks for consortium working. Newbies in the House may not know — others are bored of me saying this — that I worked in the community and voluntary sector for a very long time — it was in excess of 23 years — and in community transport for the 16 years before I came to the House. I will say honestly that European money is not the answer to everything, because, in the 16 years that I worked for community transport, I had one period where I had an employment contract that lasted for more than 12 months. Our Government do not fund the community and voluntary sector in a sustainable way. I am not going to turn away money that is going to replace European funding. Of course we need that, but I sat with the permanent secretary in the Committee for Communities when he told us that he had asked the UK Government whether they could control and manage the payment of the UK Shared Prosperity Fund money out, because there was a fear that there would be duplication. That control and management were not allowed to happen, and there was duplication. There was duplication of work that was being done by our councils, other Departments and sections of Departments, and it did not make sense. If we are going to ask the British Government to replace the money, we should ask them to allow us to set the priorities. Today, we had the draft Programme for Government, which has set out Northern Ireland's priorities. Those priorities are key. They have been put into the Programme for Government for a reason. They have been put there as reasons why we can make this place better, and that is what we should be doing. It is not a lot of use to us in Northern Ireland to take forward priorities that are more useful in England than they would be here. Let us take the rural development programme as an example. I come from a rural area, and I know how vital that programme was to our rural communities and our coastal communities, which I am also part of. Quite often in big programmes, those areas and communities are ignored. When we are setting our priorities for Northern Ireland, I do not want to see the community and voluntary sectors tearing each other apart trying to apply competitively for grant funding that sees some of those organisations disappear. We almost had that with the UK Shared Prosperity Fund. There were supported employment programmes that saw one side compete against the other at a time when we had the worst figures for the number of people with disabilities in employment. We need all those sectors to come together and deliver for Northern Ireland. We also need to consider sustainability. Any of you who have worked in the community and voluntary sector will know exactly what I am talking about. When long-term funding is not available, all of a sudden, you have to invent programmes in order to apply for the money. There is short-termism there but not multiple savings. I could talk to you all day about how much I could have saved if I had been allowed funding over seven years instead of three years when I was buying minibuses. I could have had a longer repayment period instead of having to do it all in three years, costing me twice as much. We need to think about sustainability. European funding came in blocks of time, and we have people who are employed for blocks of time. We invest in the skills of those people for blocks of time, but we need to develop it across time so that the benefits of bringing people into employment — improving community and place, and improving peace-building — are stretched out over a longer period. I heard Brian say that if we put it into the block grant, it would not be there specifically for those purposes, but it is up to us to make sure that money is set aside for our partners in the community and voluntary sector. After all, we have the concordat. What I would love to see from our Executive is a re-signing of the updated concordat — the partnership agreement between us and the community and voluntary sector — that at long last recognises how much we all need its work. Communities could not exist if our community and voluntary sector was to disappear. It needs sustainable funding; we need its sustainable programmes and intercessions to help our community. I thank the Members for tabling the motion. There has to be consideration across all Departments. DAERA will be looking at rural and coastal communities and will want to have those included. The Department for Communities will be looking at people and place, and the Department for the Economy will be looking at employability. It is right that we drive that forward. We should take it forward and take it to the UK Government, hopefully with the lead of the Minister of Finance, to say, "Guys, we can do so much with this money. Let us use it in the way that would be best for Northern Ireland". Furthermore, the amount of money needs to be negotiated to make sure that we have an appropriate amount that can be spent sustainably in the way that we want.

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

Assessment

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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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