Communities urgently need financial help due to Covid-19

Due to Covid, many community facilities around the Cork City and County have been severely impacted financially. These crucial pieces of community infrastructure include Community centres, Community Gyms, Community Arts Centres, Community Theatres / indoor and outdoor astro turf facilities which have been closed since March

The closure of these community facilities means that the room rental on which they depend has dried up leaving them in some cases with no income whatsoever. Income from fundraising such as bingo, lotto, carboot sales, and other fundraising has all but vanished.

But community groups running these facilities still have bills to pay still such as electricity and gas to keep the place from becoming damp and mould, Water bills, Insurance cover, Loans payments, Legal costs for licence renewals etc


However no funding schemes are available to help the community groups who have had no income over the last seven months
Recent emergency funding schemes such as The Community Enhancement Programme 2020 focused on capital projects and the Community Emergency Fund 2020 scheme focussed on sanitising supplies only.  While the Municipal districts will open grant schemes in the new year, unfortunately again these will be for capital projects there are no grants available for operating costs


Cork County Federation Muintir na Tire is asking local and central government immediately to put in place an emergency funding scheme to help our communities to get through this tough time.