Due to the proliferation of separate area based programmes described in the preceding section, spending in 2006 was channelled through many more conduits than was the case in 1996. Furthermore, the proportion of this spending derived from EU funding schemes declined as Ireland’s economy improved in this period. Table 3 also reveals a shift in the distribution of area based spending in favour of strongly spatially targeted measures (as defined in Table 2). Spending on these grew by 29 per cent between 1996 and 2006, whereas spending on weakly spatially targeted measures grew by 1.07 per cent, largely because contraction in spending on the Community Employment and Jobs Initiative Schemes cancelled out increased spending in other areas. This is related in turn to a marked fall in long term unemployment during these years. The growth of schemes that were strongly targeted in spatial terms benefited state bodies rather than community and voluntary sector agencies, particularly in local government and education, as many of the schemes of this type established from the mid 1990s channelled spending through these sectors. Although spending on programmes implemented by the community and voluntary sector also expanded between 1996 and 2006, by the latter year a larger proportion of this spending was linked to service provision (principally childcare, family support and addiction services), whereas in the former most of the schemes relevant to this sector funded more general community development activities.
Table 3 also categorises measures as mainly capital (funding for buildings and infrastructure), mainly current (subsidies for the running costs of agencies) and mixed (capital and current). Only six of the 24 measures were mainly capital investment, but these were generally high spending programmes and accounted for 47.6 per cent of total area based expenditure in 2006. This is a slight decline in relative terms from 1996, when measures of this type accounted for 53.6 per cent of total spending on area based programmes. Six of the programmes were mixed. The balance of 12 programmes focusing mainly on current expenditure accounted for 43.9 per cent of total spending.
4.3
Estate Level Picture: inventory and sources of funding
In order to establish what the national programmes just examined represented on the ground, the present study selected four of its seven case-study estates and sought to survey the nature and extent of services funded by area based programmes and the expenditure associated with them in 2006. Fatima Mansions and Moyross were selected as two estates where expenditure on these programmes was at the higher end of the 63
