In anticipation of a budget increase for the Department of Rural and Community Development, could we ensure that pay for staff in public participation networks, PPNs, is regularised? It would take just €1.5 million to bring PPN staff in line with their peers, such as community development partnership co-ordinators and sports partnership co-ordinators. In many cases, they are peers working in the same buildings but PPN staff are expected to work for reduced rates. Currently, the PPN support worker is a temporary grade 3 contract. It must be made permanent and upgraded. It is in contrast with our new integration units where we have a grade 7 co-ordinator, two grade 6 support workers and one clerical officer at grade 4. If we take Longford as an example, after ten years our hard-working co-ordinator is still at grade 5 and the support worker is a temporary grade 3. The Minister of State, Deputy Joe O'Brien, is well aware of the work they do in Longford, so I do not need to point it out. The Longford service operates with a paltry budget of just €25,000 to €30,000.

I thank the Deputy.

It is expected to run a county-wide network. We need to support PPNs. They are in the front line of community development and support.

I also acknowledge the work of the PPNs, which were initially established about ten years ago. They are independent bodies that operate in every local authority area. Their function is to make the connection between local policy development and local community and voluntary environmental bodies as well. My Department funds the PPN office in every local authority area. Because they are relatively new, we underwent a structural review recently and we have just completed the implementation plan on that. There were issues with how PPNs functioned in terms of their relationships with local authorities and pay issues arose in the review as well. We have the implementation plan and we will publish it very soon. I have received requests from individual PPNs for salary and wage increases. We will not be able to do that across all PPNs in the budget, given all the asks I have received. I am endeavouring to give them an increase in the budget but I cannot confirm the scale of it.

I thank the Minister of State.

Unfortunately, it will not be of the scale they are looking for.