Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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22. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government if he will cease funding the special Traveller projects and the Women’s Network as stand-alone projects; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [34308/14]

Alan Kelly (Tipperary North, Labour)
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I assume the Question relates to my Department’s Local and Community Development Programme (LCDP).

The LCDP is one of the State’s main social inclusion programmes. Its aim is to tackle poverty and social exclusion through partnership and constructive engagement between Government and its agencies and people in disadvantaged communities.

The programme currently provides funding of some €2.5m to 14 Traveller specific projects and some 17 women’s specific groups throughout the country. In addition, my Department also supports a number of Traveller projects and Women’s projects under the Scheme to Support National Organisations (SSNO). This funding scheme, which supports national organisations in the community and voluntary sector, aims to provide multi-annual funding to national organisations towards core costs associated with the provision of services. A new round of funding under this scheme commenced on 1 July 2014.

The LCDP is operating on a transitional basis in 2014 pending the roll-out of the successor programme, the Social Inclusion and Community Activation Programme (SICAP) in 2015. SICAP is one of my key priorities and its budget for next year will be decided in the 2015 Estimates process. The Programme’s target groups are:

-Children and Families from Disadvantaged Areas

- Lone Parents

- New Communities (including Refugees/Asylum Seekers)

- People living in Disadvantaged Communities

- People with Disabilities

- Roma

- The Unemployed (including those not on the Live Register)

- Travellers

- Young Unemployed People from Disadvantaged areas

In accordance with the Public Spending Code, legal advice, good practice internationally and in order to ensure the optimum delivery of the services to clients, the Programme is subject to a public procurement process, which is currently underway. Stage one (Expression of Interest) has been completed. Stage two (Invitation to Tender), which will get underway shortly , will involve the successful applicants from Stage one being invited to apply to one or more Local Community Development Committees to deliver the programme. Contracts for SICAP will be determined following the outcome of the procurement process.

The public procurement process is a competitive process that is open to Local Development Companies, other not-for-profit community groups, commercial firms and national organisations that can provide the services to be tendered for to deliver the new Programme. In Stage one, joint applications were encouraged and organisations of varying sizes (for example smaller organisations working in consortia with larger organisations) were invited to submit joint applications. When the outcome of Stage one is made known, I will be considering the implications of that for the relevant SICAP target groups.