The Minster for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs should be sacked following the slashing of the 2003 budget for Northside Partnership by almost 30% – this is in addition to the severe 7% cut in funding resulting from the 2003 budget. I believe that the Minister has sanctioned a further cut of 20% in the partnership's income. This has dealt a body blow to the organisation and has endangered the many outstanding employment, educational and community programmes successfully run by it since 1991.
The general funding of partnership companies and other development bodies throughout the country has been cut by between 10% and 40%. As one of the 12 original partnerships in the most disadvantaged areas, the Northside Partnership has pioneered many outstanding programmes to assist unemployed and lower income families. At first the partnership concentrated on long-term unemployed and women returning to the workforce. The partnership needs additional funding, rather than these miserable cutbacks, to develop its work in its administrative area of the constituencies of Dublin North-East and Dublin North-Central.
A short time ago the partnership discovered that in addition to the cut of €80,000 at the start of the year, it would not be allowed to carry over funding. Its total loss of funding amounts to €435,775. I understand that when the organisation of partnerships met the Minister he did not seem to be aware that this was the case despite the decrease in funding for ADM from €48 million to €45 million. Under the current partnership development plan, the local employment service, which was invented by the Northside Partnership, is targeting four key groups for training and job placement. These are people with disabilities, people recovering from addiction problems, ex-offenders and Travellers, of whom there is a large community on the northside. As usual, the Northside Partnership has pioneered a wave of initiatives with regard to these four target groups, and should be commended and given further assistance rather than itself being threatened with redundancies. Two mediator positions are under threat among its core staff due to these harsh cutbacks.
It was also the Northside Partnership that pioneered the challenger programme. The Minister for Education and Science, Deputy Noel Dempsey, has been talking in the last few weeks about educational disadvantage. It was we on the northside who pioneered the effort to keep children in primary and second level schools; if they cannot be kept in first level they will certainly not make it to third level. The Minister's cutbacks have savaged this programme and made it impossible for us to carry on this work with many households throughout some of the most disadvantaged parts of the northside. I commend the chief executive of the Northside Partnership, Ms Marian Vickers, and our distinguished chairperson, Mr. Padraic White, the former head of the IDA. They have rightly been praised as the leaders of one of the best partnerships and local development projects in the country.
A whole range of major developments across our region is now threatened by the failure of the Minister, Deputy Ó Cuív, to sustain and support them. We had this discussion before about iar Chonnacht and Connemara, which I know well. I wonder whether, if this partnership was in the Minister's domain, it would have been savaged in such a manner. Is the Minister prepared to deal in an even-handed way with the disadvantaged areas of Dublin, which I believe is the Minister's native city? I strongly urge him to start taking his responsibilities as Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs seriously and reverse these rotten cutbacks. I am not just talking about my partnership. I acknowledge that I have an interest in the Northside Partnership – I am a director – but equally important are all the other companies around the country, including in the Minister's own area of Galway.
This disgraceful development is part of a Fianna Fáil con trick. Before the last election, the so-called RAPID programme was foisted upon my area. Some 27 actions were supposed to be taken to deter and deal with disadvantage in the most deprived areas of my constituency. Here we are, two and a half years later, with nothing achieved. All we hear about is process – meetings, meetings and more meetings. Nothing has been done. Deputy Ó Cuív is the Minister with responsibility for community affairs and I urge him to take action to restore the Northside Partnership's funding, and the funding of the other partnerships. He should do this, or get out.
