Dáil debates

Wednesday, 18 November 2020

Rural and Community Development: Statements

 

4:25 pm

Photo of Bríd SmithBríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I want to focus in my contribution on the community sector and how it has impacted on working-class communities in my constituency and throughout Dublin and other cities. If we look back to the recession in 2008 and the cuts that followed, we can see and track how the dismantling of community development, anti-poverty and equality sector funding was very disproportionate. The severe cuts that were made by the then Fianna Fáil-Green Party coalition were estimated to be 35% for the community sector as against 7% in most other sectors. In a 2013 report, Dr. John Bamber estimated that the decrease in funding for community development was as high as 41%. Community development projects and other local development programmes were ordered to desist from campaigning and advocacy.

One of the core principles of community development work is collective action. As working-class communities began to find their voices, come together against poverty, marginalisation, exclusion and injustice, and become more politicised, successive Governments involving Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, the Labour Party and the Green Party, under the cloak of austerity and realigning the community sector, saw the opportunity to decimate the sector and completely disable it in its brief of facilitating the participation of disadvantaged communities in decision-making on issues that affected them the most. In 2009, without warning, 19 community development projects were closed down. Local project structures were taken over and colonised and local project workers were removed. The language of community development was still used but it now referred to what was primarily, and still is, a market-driven work activation and training programme that has, in effect, destroyed grassroots and local community development projects.

The rhetoric of value for money and accountability are key narratives of the Government. The systemic destruction of the sector was politically centralised and aimed at disempowering working-class communities and the anti-poverty and equality sector. I cannot emphasise enough how this systemic destruction of the vision of solidarity and equality sent a strong signal that the voices of poor, working-class communities no longer mattered. It likely put paid to a real opportunity to contribute to working-class politicisation in a very meaningful and organic way. Lots of people became politicised through their engagement with community development projects, and those projects provided opportunities for many people locally. Senator Eileen Flynn is a fantastic example of somebody who came from huge disadvantage, succeeded in getting an education and, through her work within the Traveller community, went on to involvement in national politics.

We need to rethink the whole idea that community development is just about delivering cost-effectiveness, training and giving employment in the sector. It is about much more than that. If community development does not relate to the grassroots, does not engage with the community and is not community-led, then it is really failing. Many of us in this House can offer testament to that in respect of the more disadvantaged communities in our cities and towns. In conclusion, while I acknowledge the very serious issues facing rural Ireland at this time, there are also very serious issues in our urban towns and cities.

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