Dáil debates

Thursday, 5 November 2020

Finance Bill 2020: Second Stage (Resumed)

 

3:15 pm

Photo of Paul DonnellyPaul Donnelly (Dublin West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The programme for Government committed to support and enable a strong community sector. However, at the first hurdle of the 2021 budget, this Government has stumbled at the first fence. It is important to put into context the contribution the community, voluntary and charity sector makes in Ireland. It comprises 34,842 charitable organisations, 86,481 volunteer directors and trustees, directly employs 165,000 people and manages a turnover of €14.2 billion. These organisations raise more than half of this income themselves, subsidising in a major way the cost of public services in Ireland. Indecon Economic Consultants, estimate that the total direct and indirect value of the work of Ireland’s charities exceeds €24 billion per year and supports 289,000 employees and yet the funding of one sector, the community development sector, has seen a drop of 16% in funding in this budget which is completely shocking. During the Covid-19 crisis, the success of the Community Call and the initiative of bringing local organisations together to support communities in each local authority area was acknowledged by everyone as a completely wonderful service.

It is imperative that we build on the incredible work and success of the Community Call initiative. As an organiser in my community with our local GAA clubs, I saw the impact that had on people within our local community, on those who were older and vulnerable. The social networks during this Covid-19 crisis pandemic had fully collapsed and it left people, like senior citizens and those who were vulnerable, completely isolated. Were it not for Community Call, we would have seen really catastrophic situations. I know there has been an impact on the mental and physical health of people but the Community Call initiative certainly helped many people. That is why we need to look at this Covid-19 pandemic and the impact it has had on people and at what we do at that community level to support people as we move forward.

I wish to talk about the community services programme, CSP. There has been a fundamental failure to keep up with the basic costs of the community services programme. We have projects which are dealing with vulnerable people, Travellers, people with disabilities, recovering drug users, ex-prisoners, meals-on-wheels, shops, cafés, community centres, etc., under the community services programme. The funding that was initially allocated when this programme started covered the basic cost of the minimum wage. It has not moved a single cent since then. These projects now have to fund the gap between what is given through the CSP and the minimum wage and quite a number of these projects try to reach what we might call “the living wage”. It is very important that we look at this. Unfortunately, this budget was another missed opportunity to bridge that gap to support this sector. Bear in mind that during this crisis the community, voluntary and charity sector lost upwards on €500 million in fundraising and other ways in which it raised money itself, including by renting buildings. It is important to say again that the Indecon report stated that 57% of the projects that were receiving the CSP payments could not proceed without that funding. This will have a catastrophic effect on our local communities.

I will deal briefly with community centres. We are facing a time bomb in the coming years with regard to capital funding for community centres, particularly those not owned by local authorities. It is critical that we look at providing multi-annual funding for them because those are the projects that provide services such as dancing, bingo, youth services, meals on wheels, arts and music. They provide all those services to our local communities at an affordable cost. If the community centres are not available, those other services will not be available either. It is unfortunate that we have not had the same amount of funding for the community, voluntary and charities sector that we have had for the business sector.

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