Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am not usually at the committee, but I have come for the community development aspect of the matter. It is clear from the contributions made so far that a huge amount of much-needed work is being done in rural Ireland. I apologise in advance for being a buzzkill when I bring the discussion back to community development in some of the poorest urban areas. The issue has fallen off the cliff both for the committee and the Department. Even the press release that was issued from the committee included the words "discuss rural spending". I think something has been lost in translation with regard to the brief of the Department of Rural and Community Development. When it was first set up, I was quite excited, having come from the community sector. I was a community development worker for a long time. After years and years, dating back to Deputy Éamon Ó Cuív's time in 2002, I felt the systematic destruction of the community sector and the abolition of community development projects, CDPs, had left it in disarray. It has moved from being a sector focused on social inclusion, addressing poverty and inequality and which played a crucial role during the years in critiquing State policy to being told to desist from campaigning and the closure of 19 of 180 CDPs in 2008, with those remaining being dissolved later. Local workers were taken over by managers who were not local and did not understand the target or approach needed in communities which had been destroyed by poverty and various social issues.

Coming from the community sector, the Department's community development brief covers one of the most important aspects of life in the community sector. It includes everything from addiction to the high rates of suicide and children being taken into care since the family resource structure was affected. In working class communities we have seen a rise in the number of children going into care since the CDPs and family resource centres were practically dismantled. The level of expenditure under the social inclusion and community activation programme, SICAP, is €40 million. SICAP needs to be completely reformed and restructured. There is no longer local autonomy whereby local communities are empowered to be involved in decision-making. It needs to be reinstated. By 2009, it was estimated that up to 41% of funding had been taken out of the community sector, compared to a figure of 7% across all other sectors. Effectively local community development programmes had replaced grassroots community development, which has lost its meaning. The words "community development" are still being used, but the process has become market-driven and about employment activation more than enhancing and empowering communities and building capacity within them to be able to address poverty at grassroots level.

Perhaps it is lost within the wider Department. The rural and regional development brief is understandably large and I understand the attention it needs, but the role of community development has become lost in the championing, not only by the Minister's Department. Politically, in general, there do not seem to be champions for the local community development structure. I have certainly looked in on this committee since it was set up. There was a position for either Senator Grace O'Sullivan or I, but I said I would step back and that she could take it. I have watched it, but I have not seen the community development aspect being considered to address poverty and social exclusion. We need to look at restoring funding to that sector and adopting some targeted approaches.

There will be a launch of a report in a few weeks, which unfortunately I cannot give to the committee now, that deals with the systematic destruction of community development and the impact of that. My request to the witnesses at this point is to let me support them and the Department in refocusing some of those efforts towards community development. Maybe we need to carry out some sort of review or analysis of what has happened in the past ten years within the community sector and the effect that the cuts and the restructuring have had. We can look also at reinstating a significant portion of that funding and be willing to look at the failings of both the social inclusion and community activation programme, SICAP, and of the kind of managerialism that has set in in the community sector where people from outside the community sector have come in with a very business-like model which is being imposed at a local level and is simply not working.

I have come here today to put some of these issues back on the agenda. The communities I work with, like north Clondalkin, for example, would remind a person of the 1960s, such is the lack of investment. The community is completely destroyed. It is a similar situation in Inchicore, Athy, and west Tallaght when one looks at the family resource structure. I have been meeting people in those communities and some of them did not even know that community development was within this Department. I had to tell many of the communities that there was a Minister in place in control of this. There a lack of acknowledgement or distance between them and the community development sector where people view this sector as involving rural development only. Perhaps we should do something to change that perception and put the urban question, as it were, in terms of the poorest communities in urban centres. I will bring those community sectors together and the Minister and his Department could meet us and be brought up to speed with the situation.

I am aware that this destruction started long ago before the Minister came to this Department, so I am not pointing any finger in his direction. That said, decision-making was brought back to the centre of the Department and the State and the amazing work that was happening on the ground was completely disempowered and disenfranchised.

I would look forward to having the opportunity to engage with and support the Minister and his Department in bringing some of these issues to the fore, to helping those communities that are struggling, and to looking at the current structure of SICAP.