Debate contribution: Core Grant Scheme

Debate contribution by Mr Danny Donnelly on 7 April 2025.

MLA

Mr Danny Donnelly

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

7 April 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Committee Business

Heading

Core Grant Scheme

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4891297

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. On behalf of the Committee, I thank all Members for their contributions and thank the Minister for his response to the debate. I look forward to engagement with the Minister and the Department on taking the issue forward and on how we might empower and support our community and voluntary sector, which undertakes an extremely important role in our health and social care system. I thank all staff and volunteers in our community and voluntary sector who play a key role in supporting our communities and improving health and social care outcomes for those in our communities. You are an invaluable part of our health system, and, this afternoon, we recognise your contribution. I will now comment on what some Members and the Minister said. The Chair of the Health Committee opened the debate, highlighting the expertise and specialist knowledge that those organisations bring to our communities and acknowledging the work that they did during the pandemic. He also pointed out that not funding those services will ultimately cost the Department more. Diane Dodds pointed out that the funding is 0·02% of the Health budget, and she gave the example of Relate, which gets 40% of its referrals from statutory services, such as GPs. She also highlighted that community and voluntary sector service delivery is embedded in several key strategies, such as the mental health strategy. My colleague Nuala McAllister pointed out that cuts to the core grant have led to service collapse and gave the example of a day respite service provider in her constituency that has been affected by the cut. Alan Chambers called the motion "factually flawed" and pointed out that although the Minister was under financial pressure, he had continued to fund the scheme. Cara Hunter pointed out that community and voluntary sector groups are plugging the gaps in services that are needed in healthcare delivery and highlighted that the instability of the cuts is having an impact on the sector. She gave the example of the work of Northlands in the north-west. It supports people with addiction but has lost its core grant funding. Moving on to the Minister's contribution. He highlighted the difference between previous motions that were initially directed at the Finance Minister and pointed out that £53 million was commissioned from services from the community and voluntary sector in the previous financial year. He said that the previous scheme had been in place for 20 years, and he spoke about his positive engagement with the community and voluntary sector. The Minister also said that he will look again at the scheme for next year and recounted his meaningful engagement with the community and voluntary sector over many years. He is looking forward to multi-year budgets, which will be a game changer for the community and voluntary sector. We know that our health and social care system is a very challenging place. We have the longest waiting lists in western Europe. Our primary care services are very stretched and in financial difficulty. We have massive gaps in our social care workforce, and we have over 250 organisations and charities that want to be funded and involved in the delivery of services across Northern Ireland. We must find a way to support those organisations and charities. As a Committee, we have seen at first hand, over the past year, the important roles and work of the sector. It is providing some of the really innovative approaches to services. It has also proven that it can deliver services to those who are particularly difficult to reach or who will not engage with the statutory sector. It is clear that if we want to see the shift left, to which the Minister referred, with services being delivered closer to the community, we need to have a framework in place that will allow services to be provided. Many of the services that we want to see moved into the community will be delivered by the community and voluntary sector. However, if we do not put the support frameworks in now, we may lose many of the organisations. We need sustainable funding in the community and voluntary sector that will allow it to meet the needs of our communities and their support. That is why the Committee is calling for the Minister to urgently review the core grant scheme and consider how additional funding can be identified and rolled out to many of the 234 organisations and charities that were unsuccessful in the process. There is a need for meaningful engagement with the sector to consider how the fund can be taken forward in the coming years. I thank the Members and the Minister for participating in this important debate to support the Committee motion. I will also take the opportunity to speak in my capacity as an Alliance MLA spokesperson on health. I thank all Members who contributed to the discussion and to my fellow members on the Health Committee for their work on tabling the motion. The discussions today underscore a collective concern for the well-being of our constituents and the indispensable role played by the voluntary and community sector in safeguarding public health. However, concern must translate into decisive action. The reality that we face today is stark. The budget for the core grant scheme has been slashed from £3·6 million to just £1·8 million. That decision, made in the absence of a functioning Executive, has had devastating consequences for organisations that provide front-line support to some of the most vulnerable people in our society. As mentioned by Diane Dodds, the Department of Health’s equality impact assessment recognised that the removal of the funding would impact on older people, children, people in the LGBT community, people with disabilities and carers. Further to that, among those with dependants, it will disproportionately affect women, who make up 82% of unpaid carers. NICVA — the Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action — pointed out that less than 6% of applicants received funding this year, a figure that speaks volumes. Positive Life, an affected organisation and Northern Ireland’s only dedicated HIV charity, has said that the cost of treating one additional person with HIV here could fund its core cost for three years. That highlights the fact that there is a growing and dangerous misalignment between how much the Department relies on the sector and how little it invests in its ability to deliver. It also raises the question of whether there has been any real assessment of the cost of losing those services. Has any impact analysis been carried out to understand what happens to communities when those groups are forced to close their doors? The Minister has said that there will be "winners and losers" in the process. I urge Members to pause and seriously reflect on who those so-called losers will be. When we talk about impact, we are not speaking in abstract terms; we are talking about the people of Northern Ireland — our constituents, friends, families and those who look to the Assembly and its Members to make the right decisions in their best interests. It is the people of Northern Ireland who, all too often, find themselves bearing the consequences of political indecision. The uncertainty faced by the community and voluntary organisations as they await news of vital new funding every year mirrors a broader reality: the public, too, are left in a state of perpetual anticipation, wondering not whether but when the institutions of government will, once again, be brought to a halt. That persistent instability is more than a matter of inconvenience; it harms the delivery of public services, undermines public confidence, deepens inequality and places undue strain on those already most in need. We must face an uncomfortable truth: short-term thinking, siloed funding and reactive policy are no longer fit for purpose. Health does not exist in isolation; it is shaped by housing, education, justice and community. If we want to build a health system that is truly preventative and person-centred, we need Departments working together, not in parallel but in partnership. Reform must mean more than new structures; it must mean smarter investment, clearer outcomes and real accountability for delivery. No one is pretending that reform is easy, but the alternative — continuing as we are — is simply not sustainable: not morally, not socially and not economically. The motion is not just a critique of what has gone wrong; it is a call to fix it, to review the scheme urgently, to invest properly in the groups that hold our communities together and to commit to a political culture that does not leave people guessing whether help will come or whether government will show up. I urge my fellow Members to support the motion.

1,461 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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