Fingal councillors decide to change how groups can spend community grants

Local groups are being encouraged to use more second-hand items and dispense with single-use products, as Fingal revises its community funding scheme.

At the council’s full monthly meeting on Monday, Naomi Weir, senior executive officer in Fingal’s Community and Sport Division, presented the chamber with updated criteria under which the council will support community activities across the county.

The support scheme for community activities currently offers groups up to €3,000 in funding per year, Weir said, noting that this will be the third revision to the grant scheme since it was set up in 2000.

According to the council’s budget for 2025, it provided €300,000 to cover projects across the county under the scheme for this year.

From the start of next year, the council will be placing a limit on how much each group can spend on certain expenses. 

Insurance costs, for example, which will have an annual cap of €500, Weir said. “The average cost is around €368, €370 for most groups.”

At the moment, transport costs only cover older adult groups, and the council will be putting a cap on it of 25 percent of the total funding allocated to organisations, she said. “Twenty-five percent of €3,000 is still a significant amount of money to be spending.”

Why were these transport fees predominantly for older people? Fine Gael Councillor Aoibhinn Tormey asked. 

“I’m wondering if it might be a potential barrier for, say, groups of young children with disabilities. Maybe they want to go on a day trip somewhere?” she asked.

There aren’t a lot of applications from those groups, Weir said. “We tend to notice that they have their own buses.” But it isn’t something the community division has turned down before, she said.

Weir has found that groups were using the full allocated funding for transport only, she said. 

“Paying for bus after bus after bus with no supervision, no structured activities, no legacy activity,” she said. “It was just literally being the community development side has been pushed to one side and literally let’s just bring people and drop them off in a park.”

To create a more circular economy, groups may also apply for second-hand items now, she said. “And we would like to make disposable items ineligible. So no disposable plates, cups, forks, knives. All of those gone.” 

In some cases, professional services, tutors, facilitators and speakers have been taking up all of the money some groups have been awarded, she said. “The groups are not getting any other value other than the speaker on the day.”

That is now going to be capped at half of the funding sought in an application, though, she said. “With the remainder going to the actual developmental aspect in the event itself, or initiative itself.”

Money for laptops and smartphones will be limited to 25 percent of each grant, and if funding is provided for them, they must be for the use of groups, she said. “We’ve noticed that they’re starting to go into drawers, and into the back of cars, and they’re not being used for the use of the groups.”

These revisions will come into place once the next window for applications opens on 1 January, and closes on 30 June, she said.

The proposed revisions were agreed.