Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their presentations. As a councillor, I was a member of the local community economic development committee and, as such, I was involved in the production of the plan for South Dublin County Council and in the establishment of the public participation network. I would like to make some observations on the process and to hear the witnesses' responses in that regard. Time permitting a second round of questions, I may ask questions on the planning legislation currently before the Seanad and which will be dealt with next week by the Dáil.

South Dublin County Council put a lot of effort into the development of the local economic and community development plan. The officials, councillors, statutory agencies and community and voluntary sector did a lot of work in that regard. However, I am not convinced that plan has added any value to the work of the local authority or the statutory agencies in the community and voluntary sector. If asked, most people involved in the process would probably have a similar opinion. That is not to suggest it is not a good plan or that the actions proposed therein are not good actions. I am not convinced that it has done what people thought it would do. I would be interested to hear the experiences of the local authority in that regard.

Another issue of concern was that tenders under the social inclusion community activation plan, SICAP, were invited before the plan was developed. I would have thought that the priority would have been to have the plans in place first, with bids under the tender process being on the basis of meeting the requirements of the plans. As it happened, in terms of the first half of the six-year tender, bidders were blind to the plan that was subsequently developed. How do the witnesses envisage the process will work in respect of the second round of tenders?

I had a number of significant concerns regarding the change from community development programme funding to community activation programme funding because that appeared to me to represent centralisation and because many organisations that previously would have bid for funding directly to the Department had to choose to tender in conjunction with a local partnership or step out of that process and seek funding elsewhere. For example, in regard to the Traveller development programmes, the women support networks and other small community development projects took the decision to step out of that process and to maintain their independence. Some of them obtained funding from the Department of Justice and Equality and elsewhere but some did not. I would welcome the witnesses' reflections on whether that change led to a centralisation of funding. I am sure the witnesses are aware of the huge problems this caused in Dublin, where local partnership boards were essentially set against each other to bid for funding with significant impacts. I would welcome the reflections of the witnesses on whether that was a good or bad thing. A huge concern for many of us is that while in the first round, by and large partnership boards secured funding, in terms of the second round of tenders, there is nothing stopping large private sector organisations or other large voluntary sector organisations from here or elsewhere bidding for that funding. This concern was also expressed in relation to the first round of tenders but it did not transpire. Is that a concern now? Is it something we need to key an eye out for?

The most fundamental shift in the social inclusion community activation programme was the shift from grant aid to tendering. That is a profound change in the relationship between central and local government and the service delivery agencies. Tendering places a very different set of responsibilities on organisations than does grant aid. There was a very strong lobby, of which I am very supportive, for consideration to be given to a return to direct aid by the Department, similar to other Departments and the HSE.

On the public participation networks, I believe these are a really good idea. On paper, it appears they could work. Is there any evidence that the public participation networks have increased participation of the different sectoral organisations that exist, as per the objective of their establishment? While the recommendations made are fine, given the change in the architecture of the funding mechanism and the organisation of the delivery of programmes funded under this stream was so profound, is there a need for an independent review of a select number of local authorities that are running these programmes under the new structures to see how effective they have been, what lessons can be learned and so on such that in the next round of tenders any issues or concerns that arose in the first two to three years would be ironed out and improved? Perhaps that is an issue which the committee might examine in the context of its deliberations on this issue and any recommendations in that regard to be made to the Minister.