Almost €175k COVID funding for Offaly organisations

Seven Offaly organisations have benefited from funding under the first tranche of the COVID-19 Stability Fund for Community and Voluntary Organisations, Charities and Social Enterprises (Stability Scheme).

ABOVE: St Mary's Youth Centre in Tullamore.

The grants, part of a national pot of €10.5m in funding were allocated by outgoing Minister of Rural Community Development Michael Ring on Friday last.

The largest allocation, €48,905, went to Kilcormac Development Association, for its services for older people.

Tullamore-based St Mary's Youth & Community Centre received €31,642. Dochas Offaly Cancer Support Group was given €29,918

Ballycommon Telework and Training Centre Ltd received €23,852 for its work on education support for disadvantaged communities

Community Services Initiative North Offaly was allocated €22,174 for services for older people, while for the same category, the West and South Offaly Active Age Network was given €11,682.

West Offaly ICT was allocated €5,717 for education support for disadvantaged communities.

Across the region, the Midland Simon Community was allocated €126,713 for homelessness services in the midlands.

Nationally some 179 organisations will benefit from this funding initially under Tranche One. Once-off cash injections of between €2,000 and €200,000 are being awarded to qualifying organisations that provide critical services to those most vulnerable in society to help with short term cash flow issues being suffered due to the COVID crisis.

The department stressed that further tranches of funding would be announced over the coming weeks.

Speaking on Friday, Minister Ring said: “Community and voluntary organisations, along with charities and social enterprises have been at the heart of our country’s response to the challenges brought by COVID-19. In every corner of the country people have got behind their community and dug deep to help each other. But they needed help and extra resources to ensure they could continue to deliver the critical services and cope with the inability to generate traded or fundraised income due to social restrictions. In many cases while the rest of the world shut down, these organisations kept going and my colleagues in Government and communities all over the country are grateful for that.”