Pat Carey (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail)

I am well aware of the debate outside the House about community development projects and family resource centres but as I mentioned in my reply the relevant Departments will bear the main funding of active citizenship projects. It is a matter therefore for each Department to identify where savings can be achieved in the current economic climate. This and previous Fianna Fáil-led Governments built up the community development projects in all areas. In the short time that I was a Minister of State at the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs I saw the very valuable work that the community development projects carry out. The model developed for delivery of community development projects is one of several that could be used with equal effect for active citizenship and the benefit of citizens. There are different parts of the country where the integration of community development projects, with RAPID and CLÁR programmes and others is already working very successfully. I saw this in the west and Carlow. It is over a year since I worked in that Department but I have no doubt that local partnerships and their expanded remit can incorporate very successfully and appropriately the work community development projects are doing and will continue to do. I believe that consolidation is probably the way forward for many of them.

Deputy Ó Caoláin will know as well as I do that in some cases there is duplication of effort and outcomes between family resource centre work and community development projects. More efficient outcomes can be achieved with greater consolidation of resources and integration between local development projects at local level. The commitment I will give at this stage is that the Government will continue to invest in the concert of local community development. The models for delivery of that outcome will inevitably change from time to time and from area to area. That is the definition of local community development.

See this speech in context