Clare Daly (Dublin North, United Left)
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119. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government if he will ensure that community development is provided a separate funding steam away form the SICAP. [3951/15]

Ann Phelan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Labour)
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My Department’s Local and Community Development Programme (LCDP) is the largest social inclusion intervention of its kind in the State. The current Programme officially ended at the end of 2013 having operated for four years with funding of €281 million over that period.  It is being implemented on a transitional basis until March 2015, pending the roll out of the new Social Inclusion and Community Activation Programme (SICAP) in April 2015.

The SICAP is one of my Department’s key priorities. 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

Community development is an integral part of SICAP and underpins the entire programme.

In accordance with the Public Spending Code, legal advice, good practice internationally and in order to ensure the optimum delivery of services to clients, SICAP is subject to a public procurement process, which is currently underway.

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. The outcome of the procurement process will be known next month.