asked the Minister for Social Welfare the commitment he gave to the Coolock Law Centre, Dublin, in November 1983; and the funding he will make available in 1984.
10.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Coolock (Dublin) Law Centre.
9.
asked the Minister for Social Welfare if he will reconsider his recent decision on Coolock Law Centre, Dublin, and provide the required funding to maintain the centre for at least another year.
I propose to take Questions Nos. 9 and 10 together. At a meeting with representatives of Coolock Community Law Centre on 1 December 1983 I explained that I could not give any long-term commitment to funding the centre as there were no funds available to my Department from which such funding could be given. I referred, however, to the Combat Poverty Organisation which I propose to establish in accordance with the Government's programme and I suggested that the centre might make application for funding to this body in due course. It would of course be for the organisation themselves to decide whether and to what extent funding should be given.
Pending the establishment of the organisation I undertook to examine the possibility of providing interim funding and for this purpose I have obtained the sanction of the Minister for Finance to make available a sum of £10,000 to the centre.
Is the Minister aware that the Coolock Community Law Centre is the major community resource on the north side of Dublin and provides advice on a whole range of social issues and takes on more than 450 cases each year? If the Minister is so aware, he must be concerned if such a centre were to close. The commitment appears to be that interim funding will be provided until such time as the new poverty agency is set up. Could the Minister tell us when that agency will be set up and if funding will be provided to the law centre to enable it to remain open until such time as it can apply to the new funding agency?
As I told the Deputy, pending the establishment of the combat poverty organisation, I undertook to examine the possibility of providing interim funding and for this purpose I have obtained the sanction of the Minister for Finance to make available a sum of £10,000 to the centre. When the Combat Poverty Agency is set up — and proposals for the setting up of this agency are going before the Dáil — it will be for that organisation to decide whether and to what extent funding should be given to this centre.
Is the Minister aware that this £10,000 will keep the centre going only until the end of next March? In view of recent financial difficulties experienced by the Coolock Community Law Centre — it was on the verge of closing in December — will the Minister give an undertaking that towards the end of next month a further grant will be given to the centre until the anti-poverty programme is established?
The activities of the centre are in the area of legal aid services which do not come within the ambit of the Department of Social Welfare. Nevertheless, down through the years the Department have given aid and have made it clear on more than one occasion that the particular funding at different times was to be the final funding. Now arrangements are being made to make this further payment of £10,000; then it will be for the Combat Poverty Agency to examine the situation and to decide whether and to what extent they will make any allocation that will assist the centre.
No voluntary organisation should expect full funding from the State and the centre should be expected to raise at least a proportion of the necessary funds by their own efforts. Despite statements on a number of occasions that the centre would not continue to be funded by the State, no effort appears to have been made to raise funds otherwise than by way of State grants in one form or another. The Deputy will agree that my Department and the State have contributed very generously to this centre.
Would the Minister not agree that the Coolock Community Law Centre would not exist if State services were adequate to cope with the needs of the people in the area? Would he also not agree that it is because of the existence of this centre that the State is being relieved of a considerable amount of expenditure which it would otherwise have to make in that area? Could the Minister say why his Department accepted responsibility for the financing of that centre last year but this year they blankly refused to accept any responsibility? Does he consider it fair that the people of this area are being treated in this way?
As I said, the centre was funded in 1976 from the then combat poverty programme and in 1977, 1978 and 1979 it obtained funding from the Department of Justice. That indicates the value the State places on the work being done in that centre. One of the arguments in reply to the point the Deputy raised about what he called the inadequacy of the State scheme of legal aid is that, if the State were to continue to fund in a big way centres such as this, the State would never provide a proper State system because money would be diverted from a proper State system to such centres——
Is the Minister serious? That is a joke.
We have given a commitment of £10,000 for the centre but there was never a long-term commitment given——
It was given by the Labour Party.
That is the trouble. There was never a long-term commitment given.
Now, because there has been this ad hoc funding of the centre going back eight or nine years, the argument has been made that this ad hoc funding arrangement should continue. What is being done is being regularised now through the proposals outlined in my original answer.
A final supplementary——
It had better be short.
Would the Minister accept that as such advisory facilities are not available from the State that is the very reason this law centre has been in operation since 1975? In the absence of such facilities surely the law centre should be financed by the State?
I am sure that the people involved in the centre will be making that case——
It has been made.
——to the Combat Poverty Agency who will I am sure give the matter full consideration.