Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 14 June 2016
319. Deputy Clare Daly asked the Minister for Social Protection his views on the imminent closure of the WALK PEER programme in County Louth and the provisions he will put in place to provide alternative projects for the service users who will have no service from 1 August 2016. [15893/16]
View answerThe Providing Equal Employment Routes (PEER) project was one of 14 disability activation projects (DACT), in the Border, Midlands and West region, which were jointly funded by the European Social Fund (ESF) and the Department of Social Protection (DSP), from the end of 2012 to April 2015. The project was delivered by the Walkinstown Association for People with an Intellectual Disability (WALK).
The objective of the DACT programme was to explore a variety of routes towards ensuring that people with disabilities were enabled to avail of progression, education and development opportunities within the world of work. The target group was young people with disabilities aged 16 – 24, including those with physical disability, sensory impairment, mental health problems, challenging behaviours, medical conditions and/or autism.
A key criterion applied when selecting projects was that the learning from this activity should be capable, where appropriate, of being mainstreamed in the future. Therefore, it is important to note that the projects were never intended to become ongoing service delivery organisations in their own right, no matter how successful the projects might have been.
It was on this basis that each of the DACT projects was awarded funding with a specified end date of 30 April 2015. However, in the closure phase of the programme, it was recognised by the Department that there would be a number of people still actively participating on some of the DACT projects, so a decision was made to provide funding to seven of the projects, which included the WALK PEER project, for a short period to the end of July 2015. This funding was provided so as to allow projects to ensure that their participants finished their involvement in an orderly manner. All funding ended to the projects in July 2016.
I understand that the WALK PEER project was subsequently successful in obtaining additional funding from a private sector organisation and I believe that it is this source of support that will terminate in July 2016.
Given the origin and history of the project as set out above, it should be clear why there is no provision in my Department's estimates to provide further funding to this project or alternative projects as suggested by the Deputy
I hope this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.
