Madam, – Layla de Cogan Chin, in the Department of Community Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, takes the academics to task for questioning the department’s plans (November 30th and November 25th). The academics are correct in their summary of what is proposed for community groups: the destruction of 20 years of real community involvement of local people.
The department needs to consider what is community development: “The long-term process whereby people who are marginalised or living in poverty work together to identify their needs, create change, exert more influence in the decisions which affect their lives and work to improve the quality of their lives, the communities in which they live, and the society . . .”(www.cpa.ie/povertyinireland/glossary.htm). The strategy currently proposed is equal to the total opposite of community development. It proposes to subsume the work of Community Development Projects into partnership companies which will result in the dismantling of local community structures, and people who live within those communities eventually becoming surplus to requirements and will have no say in identifying the issues and the solutions that affect their lives.
The recent meeting in Croke Park was called with one week’s notice to the groups, and was not a discussion but transmission of the plan. Far from harnessing “expertise and voluntary effort” the plan will destroy local involvement and create a structure that has no connection with people in local areas. The anger and frustration expressed by the community groups at Croke Park gave voice to feelings in communities throughout the country. Structures that have worked so well are being dismantled.
The department has adopted a top down approach; by “explaining fully” the proposed structure there is no evidence of an effective and sympathetic approach. Some projects will be deemed non-viable. Where is the transparency in knowledge of the criteria used? For most of the existence of the community development projects there was a sense of partnership with the government department responsible with real discussion and understanding of the process; in recent years this has not been the case, culminating in the present plan.
Local involvement has been ignored and years of local people learning about issues and taking action has been bypassed in favour of a department idea that goes against all wisdom, learning and practice of community development both nationally and internationally. – Yours, etc,