John Curran (Dublin Mid West, Fianna Fail)

The McCarthy report is an independent report. The Deputy mentioned specific instances in which the report was not supportive of programmes or stated there was little evidence for positive outcomes. I do not agree there is little evidence of positive outcomes from those initiatives. I refer in particular to the local development social inclusion programme and the community development programme. It is my objective that my Department's schemes and programmes, whether delivered directly or on the Department's behalf, give good value for money and meet the needs of all the communities and people we serve. In this regard, they are quite successful. My belief is based on successive independent reviews, audits and studies and, more importantly — the Deputy will agree with this — the detailed feedback I receive directly from communities and groups on a daily basis.

That being said, I have had concerns for some time about the manner in which we have programmes running in parallel. I knew we needed to redesign the community development and social inclusion programmes and it is in that regard I made the announcement a number of weeks ago that the programme would be redesigned to provide a single mechanism of delivery in order to be more effective and streamlined. However, I do not agree with the comment that these programmes do not deliver benefits for communities. I have seen it first hand. More importantly, however, these programmes have been running for a number of years and we have had a number of independent reviews and audits of their outcomes.

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