Madam, – Minister of State John Curran is planning the alignment of the Community Development Programme (CDP) with the local partnership companies. Following a (behind closed doors) review of the 180 or so projects in the CDP, it is anticipated that a majority will cease to exist, with the remainder to be swallowed-up by their local partnership company.
I understand the junior minister further intends to instruct those remaining CDPs to dissolve their voluntary boards of management to become advisory boards under the partnership – for one year only. The assets of the – then defunct – community groups are also expected to be transferred to the partnership. These community assets are in many cases sports halls, community buildings and drop-in centres developed over years or decades by many volunteers through sponsored walks, table quizzes, race nights, and so on.
At the stroke of a pen, it appears, the junior minister is proposing to commandeer these community properties and transfer their ownership to the quasi-State organisations that partnerships are.
We have heard of unscrupulous employers in the private sector, using the financial crisis to attack workers’ rights and conditions, but here we have an agent of the state – the junior minister – under the guise of financial cutbacks attacking the very independent existence of a vibrant community sector, in the face of stated commitments to the autonomy of the sector in government white papers and the active citizenship process.
While the Department of Community, Rural Gaeltacht Affairs, (commonly known as Craggy Island) has the very considerable power to withdraw funding from projects, it is clearly losing the plot in considering instructing autonomous projects to go out of existence. Many of the projects are in existence for longer than the funding coming through the Community Development Programme and many have a wider funding base too.
Of the 180 CDPs about 20 are local Traveller projects. The proposed development is particularly ominous for them, as many local partnership companies have proved to be utterly useless in supporting Traveller issues, when these come up against vested interests on partnership boards.
Along with the sweeping cuts to the Equality Authority some time ago, this is further proof of a targeted attack on participative democracy and dissenting voices representing marginalised communities. – Yours, etc,