Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

At the outset, I want to express my dissatisfaction with the shambles that today's sitting is turning out to be. Given that this Parliament sits for so few days in the year, and only three days per week, it really is a disgrace that the Government could not organise itself to have business today. Effectively, the House went into recess this morning and there is this minor session this afternoon which will be finishing up in the next few minutes. That does nothing at all to improve the standing of politics. It seriously undermines it.

It is a very far cry from the new politics we were promised. In addition, it is really disappointing that, when matters are raised in the Topical Issues debate, a Minister does not come to respond. Given the fact that there are three Ministers in the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government, it is not acceptable that not one of them is available to come this afternoon.

The matter I am raising relates to the decision to reverse a lot of the progress made at community level in recent years. I am asking that consideration be given to rethinking the recent decisions in respect of the social inclusion and community activation programme, SICAP, scheme. It is clear that the scheme is a continuation of the general squeezing of the community sector that has been happening in an unrelenting way in recent years. I know that the Minister of State, Deputy Kevin Humphreys, will be very familiar with this, given the constituency he represents. In recent years there has been a positively hostile attitude on the part of the Government to the community sector. It is most pronounced in the case of Fine Gael Members in the constant undermining, cutting of the funding for and talking down of the community sector. In the context of all the cuts in people's incomes, local and child care services, the community sector is the glue that keeps disadvantaged communities together. When that sector is being undermined by the Government, it is a recipe for disaster and huge social alienation of large numbers of people. That is what I believe we are seeing. It is unfortunate that the Labour Party has not been prepared to stand up to that attitude within the Government or stand up for the communities it is supposed to protect.

The SICAP process has reduced the number of partnerships in the Dublin area. There were seven and the proposal is to reduce that number to five, with no rationale for doing so. Most particularly, I am concerned about the implications of that decision in my constituency where, effectively, the Ballymun-Whitehall area partnership is being abolished. Some of the work it did is being taken over by the Tolka area partnership. Ballymun includes two of the top most disadvantaged electoral divisions, which gives a flavour of the issue. We all know that Ballymun is a huge area with a huge population of 16,000 and very significant social problems. On no level does it make any sense to close down the partnership that is doing so much important work in the area, in working with other agencies, in terms of community development, enterprise and child care. It has done a fantastic job in the past 24 years and now the Government, it seems for inexplicable reasons, is closing it down with no regard to the implications for the community or the staff concerned who have not been told anything about where they stand or whether they will have jobs in a few months time. The decision has been taken and it is very damaging and will have significant implications. At this late stage, I am asking the Minister to give some consideration to restoring the separate partnership which served the Ballymun-Whitehall area so well for so long.

The decision to cut overall funding by over 11% - it represents about €200,000 being taken away from a very disadvantaged area - having regard to all of the cuts that have taken place in recent years, will inevitably lead to huge problems in the area and exacerbate existing ones. I ask the Minister to reconsider this decision and restore the much-needed funding that has been taken away.

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