Last month, at the invitation of Senator Michael Carrigy, the staff of Public Participation Networks from across the country attended Leinster House to speak on the growth of the PPNs across Ireland in their ten years in existence.
When registrations began, in 2016, PPNs had 11,500 community groups. This has almost doubled to over 22,000 groups and in Cavan PPN alone, groups have expanded since the start of this year alone from 356 groups to 450.
However, as the remit of staff and volunteers expands to helping network, train and provide a voice for these groups, the resources to do so have not, with only a 10,000 euro increase in the budget over that ten year period.
Coordinator at Cavan Public Participation, Daniel Downey says investment in the service to continue the work they do across Cavan and he has been speaking to Ronan Gargan.
