We have to come to grips with the term "local development". Deputy Harney made the point that all employment issues should be dealt with by the one Department. Local development is co-ordination and is rightly located in the Department of the Taoiseach which is where co-ordination properly takes place given that the civil servants in this Department chair many interdepartmental committees. Local development is a means of creating local employment but it also has greater implications.
I will announce 35 disadvantaged areas throughout the country. They have been scientifically chosen based on data compiled by bodies such as the Combat Poverty Agency. In each area there are problems associated with long term unemployment and social structure problems. In each area a partnership company will be established comprising the social partners — businesses and trade unions — the local community and State agencies. It will have a local office and manager. It will consult widely with the community to determine its needs under a number of headings and produce a plan which will be submitted to an umbrella a company called Area Development Management Limited, ADM. Each company could receive, on average, up to £400,000 per year for up to five years. This figure was arrived at by dividing the amount available by the number of areas designated. An area as big as Donegal could expect to receive more than could a small segment of the city if it submits a plan to justify this. I am giving an indication of the magnitude of the assistance available.
In addition each company will be able to avail of the services of mentors, professional and business advice, advice from State agencies, information and advice on how to plug into mainstream services and to identify vulnerable school-leavers who become the long term unemployed. The Department of Education will also allocate an education co-ordinator to each area who will consult with the partnership company and produce a menu of items covering such matters as teaching people computer and other skills. Assistance will be provided for preschool facilities and in certain categories more generous community employment training will be provided.
Community integration is not just a matter of employment, it is a matter of tackling poverty and disadvantage in the poorest areas. It is also about empowering local communities aware of their own needs to tackle their problems. Local development is targeted and integrated and there are 12 pilot partnership area schemes from which we can learn. If it works according to plan, which I think it will, it will be one of the most successful schemes ever introduced here.
One of Fianna Fáil's newest recruits, a former IDA chief executive, said on radio recently that his partnership company has placed 600 people who were long term unemployed in employment in north Dublin during the past 12 months. It is to be commended for this. I am not interested in the political hue of those involved; the only question I ask is whether they can be effective and I look for a positive answer in each case. Similarly in Tallaght a significant number of people who were long term unemployed have been placed in employment during the past 12 months.
This is not about making announcements; rather it is about informing the local community in disadvantaged areas of the opportunities available, giving them the tools with which to do the job, real power and, in turn, asking them to take responsibility. In giving them a budget, a manager, an office, back-up advice, assistance and encouragement the approach is to find out why young people are leaving school and what can be done to prevent it. Each community will have a different answer. That is the reason a menu will be supplied by the Department of Education from which local partnership companies will be able to choose the best solution for their areas.
The interim report of the task force on long term unemployment proposed the establishment of an all-in-one combined service for the long term unemployed. This service which is currently operated in 12 pilot partnership areas offers guidance, counselling, career path direction, education and employment placing, the net intended effect being to break the cycle of self-perpetuating long term unemployment. The operational programme for local urban and rural development is expanding the number of partnership areas from 12 to 35. These areas, which meet certain disadvantage criteria, will now be supported in the creation of small local enterprise; the establishment of projects to enhance the local environment.
In recognition of the link between poverty, unemployment and early school leaving, innovative measures will be taken to reduce the incidence in disadvantaged areas of school drop-out at a young age. In one part of Dublin 35 per cent of all those who leave school do so at the age of 15 or younger. In one of the areas covered by this scheme in Dublin the unemployment rate is 45 per cent; it is as high as 70 per cent to 80 per cent in parts of this area.
Community employment which is intended to act as a bridge between long term unemployment and eventual reentry into the labour market may be extended from one to three years for certain participants, mainly those over the age of 45. All these measures are dependent on and should ensure the participation of local communities in the forging of their own future. Up to £10 million will be provided to identify early school-leavers and assist pre-school centres in disadvantaged areas together with a programme to help vulnerable early school-leavers who usually become the long term unemployed.
Thirty-five companies will be created locally, made up of the social partners, State agencies and the local community, with a budget of £89 million over the five year period. The objective will be to enhance the local environment so as to attract enterprise to areas of greatest need. We are empowering local communities to have a real and substantial say in creating job opportunities. The programme will facilitate training in local authority estate management as the environment in which we live has a direct relationship to education and employment opportunities.
I have long believed that there are two primary ways of creating an opportunity for equality in society, access to third level education and to decent housing. Even if people have access to third level education, how can we expect them to study in some of the local authority flat complexes in this city and in some local authority estates around the country as the environment in such housing is completely wrong? Not only is access to third level education and, in many cases, second level education completely cut off to those people, but the environment in which they live marks them out as people who have a hill to climb. There is a direct relationship between education, environment and employment opportunities.
The programme will provide a framework agreement between each partnership company and FÁS, within the partnership area locally. Plans will be agreed between the company and FÁS to ensure that the FÁS schemes are those needed in that area in terms of their priorities.
It is easy to denigrate and be critical but it is not so easy to be hard working, to research and to ascertain the facts. Many people in the House who advocate certain economic policies from time to time do not live in the real world of the unemployed or the unemployable person living in a local authority flat in inner city Dublin or in many of our rural areas. This local development plan will give hope to local communities and provide them with the tools to do the job. It will also cut through the patronising nonsense which has emanated from State agencies for years by acknowledging that local communities know best and must do the job. However, local communities cannot continue to ask what the State will do for them. The people to whom we give this type of responsibility must shape the future of their own communities. If they do that, I have no doubt that the target which I set of creating 8,000 jobs through local partnerships over the next five years will be realisable. If the Northside partnership is anything to go by, that target certainly can be achieved in those 35 partnership companies. The £89 million will considerably help that process but, equally important, is co-operation between the communities, the State agencies and the business, trade union and farming organisations involved with these companies.
As a former Lord Mayor of Dublin and a member of Dublin Corporation's Housing Committee for 16 years until I resigned on my appointment as Minister of State, I am not satisfied with Dublin Corporation's record in regard to estate management. That probably applies to other local authorities also but I can only speak about the one with which I am most familiar. This is an important point in any debate on employment in our community. If people do not have the right environment in which to study and evaluate their own worth, they are starting out in life not just with a bad address but with a millstone around their necks.
It is not good enough to simply spend money on refurbishing local authority flat complexes. In Fatima Mansions, in my constituency, approximately £10,000 per unit was spent on refurbishment. That is a substantial amount of money which obviously incorporated work on the exterior of the flats and the gardens. However, having refurbished the flats Dublin Corporation did not put in place any type of proper estate management, by that I mean management which involves the tenants and requires them to take some of the responsibility for the maintenance of their estates.
Some of these flat complexes contribute to bringing down these areas. Businesses will not locate in a community that looks derelict or which has dark, dank stairwells on which people shoot up drugs. They do not want to be associated with those areas. If we are serious about tackling unemployment in our blackspot communities, we must be serious also about removing decay and dereliction.
In one flat complex in my constituency — not the one to which I have just referred — 2,000 people are living almost on top of each other in a series of tower blocks. That is equivalent to a fairly large village in any part of rural Ireland and yet, there has not been any attempt to encourage proper estate management or a system whereby there is control over who enters those flat complexes; anybody who wants to enter them to ply their illegal trades can do so. I believe estate management is central to preventing urban decay which takes from the possibility of attracting industry to local areas.
Under the programme local communities will be provided with a budget and a local office. Communities will be consulted on their plans which will be evaluated. Early school leavers will be identified and the pre-school situation will be examined. A menu of educational opportunities will be identified and consultations will take place with the local communities on a framework document for training through FÁS. These measures are an important part of an integrated plan to tackle disadvantaged and unemployment in those areas of our community which have suffered greatly for far too long.
I ask the support of all the Members for this programme of urban and rural development which goes beyond the simple remit of employment. The provision of employment and helping the long term unemployed is the objective but that must be done through an integrated programme. I hope that all Deputies who are invited to attend local launches around the country will do so because it is important to encourage and give leadership locally to the community to participate in this important programme.