Vol. 532 No. 1
71 Dr. Upton asked the Minister for Tourism, Sport and Recreation if he has satisfied himself with the rate at which money is being drawn down under the social inclusion and child care sub-programme of the national development plan; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [6624/01]
The local development work of area based partnerships and ADM community groups continues to be supported with funding under the social inclusion and child care sub-programme of the regional operational programmes. This funding amounts to £220 million over the life of the National Development Plan 2000-06. A sum of £122 million has also been provided for the national drugs strategy under the sub-programme for this period.
The local development measure required that local action plans were drawn up by partnership companies and ADM community groups, in consultation with the director of community and enterprise of the relevant city and county development boards. These plans were submitted to ADM Limited by December 2000 and were evaluated by ADM's appraisal committees for the southern and eastern region, and for the Border, midlands and western region. The allocation of funding for the period 2000-03 has taken place. Allocations are subject to an annual review and the amounts allocated may be increased or decreased on the basis of each groups effectiveness in carrying out their plan.
In 2000 more than £16 million was drawn down under the new programme. Last year also saw the completion of work under the previous local development programme, OPLURD, which amounted to funding of a further £6 million. A total of £34.5 million has been allocated to ADM for partnerships and community groups to implement their action plans in 2001. Of this amount, £6.8 million has already been drawn down by ADM to cover the first three months of 2001. As the programmes provided for in the plans are only now commencing in some areas this is a satisfactory level of drawdown for the period in question.
Under the drugs initiative, an amount of over £9 million was drawn down under the NDP in 2000. This amount relates to expenditure under the existing local drugs task force plans. The task forces are currently in the process of submitting their new plans for assessment by the national drugs strategy team. No deadline was set for the submission of up-dated plans in order to give the task forces as much time as they needed to develop new strategies. However, to date, 11 plans have been submitted with the remaining three expected over the coming month or so. Of these, six plans have so far been approved by the Cabinet Sub-Committee on Social Inclusion. Draw down for 2001 will commence as soon as the projects provided for under the approved plans are in place.
