Debate contribution: Voluntary and Community Sector Funding

Debate contribution by Mr John O'Dowd on 5 May 2026.

MLA

Mr John O'Dowd

Party at the time

Sinn Féin

Date

5 May 2026

Type

Debate contribution (made as a minister)

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Voluntary and Community Sector Funding

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5525104

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Go raibh maith agat, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle.

I welcome the opportunity to respond to the debate. I fully recognise the social and economic value of the community and voluntary sector and the vital role that it plays across our society in supporting and strengthening communities and delivering essential public services. As Finance Minister and as an MLA, I can clearly see the sector's contribution to the provision of services, particularly for the most vulnerable in our communities. The Health, Education, Justice and Communities Departments in particular benefit from the support of that sector in delivering public services. While I welcome the motion's recognition of the value of the community and voluntary sector and the impact that it has across our communities, I strongly disagree with the proposed solution. It simply cannot fall to the Executive to fill the gaps that have been created by the British Government, especially when the proposers of the motion are aware that it is British Government policy that has reduced the Executive's spending power. The amendment in the names of my colleagues Colm Gildernew, Declan Kearney and Sinéad Ennis reflects the real reason for the issues being experienced by the sector, and, for that reason, I fully support that amendment. Before Brexit, the European structural and investment funds, in particular the European social fund, played an important role in the delivery of services to our communities. EU funds were delivered through local Departments, working with stakeholders, and had an agreed matched funding obligation in place. Those funds were replaced by the Shared Prosperity Fund, which was controlled and directly delivered by Whitehall. That fund was smaller than the EU funds that it was supposed to replace. As has been said, we went from an average of £65 million a year from the multi-year European funding programme to an average of £35 million a year from the Shared Prosperity Fund. The local growth fund in turn replaced the Shared Prosperity Fund and was designed by the British Government, despite commitments in the Labour Party manifesto that Labour would devolve those funds and their programmes to devolved institutions. In March 2025, the Executive were proactive and agreed a position for the new local growth fund in anticipation of partnership and local control. That set out six clear and reasonable principles for the fund. First, funding must be long-term and sufficient in value. Secondly, there must be co-design with partners. Thirdly, structures must be efficient and accessible. Fourthly, interventions must be in line with the Programme for Government. Fifthly, lessons, both positive and negative, must be learnt from what went before. Sixthly, time is critical, and we needed to be able to move quickly to prevent another funding cliff edge. Those principles were designed to avoid exactly the type of cliff edge that the community and voluntary sector has now experienced. The Executive's position and principles were provided to the British Government but were largely ignored. Very late last year, there was, finally, recognition by Westminster that Executive involvement was needed. That, in turn, led to some detail shared with us in October. The local growth fund was to be delivered by the Executive and the NIO with a wholly unsuitable capital and resource split. No flexibility was allowed across the years. Delays in its development caused unrealistic timescales, including a capital in-year allocation that had to be expedited and spent by the end of March 2026. The fund actually started in April 2026. That illustrates the poor approach taken on this. None of this was ideal, none of this was what the Executive wanted and none of this was what the sector needed. That led to a focused and determined action from the Executive in the very short time frame available. We put forward a mitigation plan that, unfortunately, by necessity, saw the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government continue to deliver the resource funding for 2026-27 to ensure that money continued to flow. We sought proposals from Departments for the use of the 2025-26 capital allocation, making recommendations to the NIO that led to the funding of the recently announced North City Business Centre project in Belfast. We instructed officials to commence work with the NIO to help it deliver its investment plan for the local growth fund to ensure that, once agreed, it will form a strong basis for the delivery of the fund. As a result of the Executive's mitigation plan, organisations previously funded through the Shared Prosperity Fund will receive continued, albeit reduced, funding. That provided some level of reassurance for the sector amidst uncertainty. My officials have been advised that it is to be paid to the sector this month. I recognise that it is much less than the sector received previously, but it is as a result of the British Government's decision to massively reduce the resource portion of the local growth fund. I and the Executive have made 19 separate representations in just 12 months to various British Government Ministers, up to and including the Prime Minister, about the local growth fund, calling for a more sensible split, but Westminster has refused to do so. The motion calls for ring-fenced funding in the Budget to address the British Government shortfall and provide stability. My proposals for the draft Budget for 2026 to 2030 have been developed against the backdrop of an exceptionally constrained financial position. In that context, it has not been possible to provide any Department with the funding as requested. It is the responsibility of each Minister to determine how to best incorporate funding for the community and voluntary sector into their departmental decision-making process. I have written to my Executive colleagues asking them to consider what opportunities there are in Departments to support the sector. Continued underinvestment in public services by the Westminster Government means that the available resource and capital funding is very constrained over the Budget period. It is worth noting that, despite me publishing my draft Budget on 6 January, no other party has published a budget, a draft budget or budget proposals, including the Opposition. The Opposition have had ample opportunity to publish an alternative budget within which they could have shown the community and voluntary sector the other areas of public funding that they would have cut in order to bring forward the ring-fencing that is called for in the motion. There is no point in the Opposition — or any party — coming to the Chamber at this late stage, saying, "Ring-fencing should take place", and not outlining in detail where that funding should come from and what services would be cut as a result of their decision to step away from the unified front that the Executive have had thus far, doing their solo run, being spokespersons for the NIO and the British Government, and raising expectations in a sector that has been let down by too many too often. If you have proposals for where the funding should be ring-fenced from and which services should be cut, I assure you that I will listen to them. The current situation with the local growth fund is the result of a succession of poor decisions by the British Government. As I have stated before, and as has been said in the Chamber, it is not realistic for the British Government or the Opposition to expect the Executive, with an already extremely constrained Budget, to fill gaps that have been created by others. That is especially the case when a technical change to the capital/resource split by the Government would have improved the situation at no overall cost. The NIO is shortly due to launch a consultation on its local growth fund investment plan. I encourage anyone with an interest to contribute to that consultation. Until the conclusion of the NIO consultation, and until decisions are made on how it will be delivered, the local growth fund remains very much a British Government-delivered fund. I expect that, following the NIO consultation, that delivery responsibility will transfer to the Executive. We must not repeat the mistakes made elsewhere. Therefore, it is vital for us to work with and support stakeholders on how we can put that funding to best use. We must maximise impact and focus on opportunities in order to secure positive and deliverable results despite the limitations imposed by others. However, that is the work of the weeks and months ahead. Today, we are faced with a motion that correctly identifies the issue — support for the community and voluntary sector — that prescribes a poor solution and that misses the crucial point of British Government responsibility. The amendment in the names of Colm Gildernew, Declan Kearney and Sinéad Ennis reflects the reality of our current Budget situation. It is unfair to the community and voluntary sector to table motions such as this, calling for the ring-fencing of funding and solutions without saying where that ring-fenced funding should come from and what services the Opposition or whoever else supports the motion are prepared to curtail or cut.

I will in a moment. Cuts to public services will have real impacts. They will also impact on the community and voluntary sector and they will have a detrimental impact on service users.

"Mishandling" is a somewhat polite term for what the British Government have been involved in here. During my different terms and phases of being a Minister, I have dealt with successive British Ministers and I have never dealt with a more disrespectful approach than to the local growth fund. It was disrespectful not only to me as an individual Minister but to the Executive collectively. Correspondence was ignored for months by the respective Department, and it showed me complete disregard and disrespect, not only to us as elected representatives but to the community and voluntary sector and to the users of the sector. There was a complete lack of respect for or understanding of our situation. I am not sure exactly to what the Member refers in relation to a working group, but a cross-departmental working group that was established at official level has met on a regular basis and has engaged. My officials have regularly met the community and voluntary sector. I also met the sector and had discussions with its representatives. I know their frustrations and anger about the matter. A strange triumvirate of Gerry Carroll, Timothy Gaston and Matthew O'Toole has come here to defend the British Government. Keir Starmer has more friends in this Chamber than he has in his own Chamber, when it comes to certain stages. The responsibility lies elsewhere. I am open to ideas and solutions as to how we can continue to support the community and voluntary sector, but tabling motions such as this one, which does not contain any solutions, is unfair to the sector and unfair to the users of its services.

1,812 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 15:38 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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