Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Tuesday, 22 Jun 1993

Vol. 432 No. 6

Written Answers. - Catholic Social Services Council Funding.

Michael Finucane

Ceist:

198 Mr. Finucane asked the Minister for Health the reason his Department refused the Catholic Social Services Council a grant to restore its Leader programme as funding was to be used in its drug awareness programme in the schools; and if he will make a statement on the matter.

Minister for Health (Mr. Howlin)

I am strongly committed to drug awareness programmes that will be effective in preventing drug misuse and my Department supports many organisations who are making a valuable contribution to this area. The health promotion unit of my Department has a range of information leaflets and booklets for parents, young people and health professionals which serve as educational resources in this area.

The health promotion unit in conjunction with the psychological service of the Department of Education is currently completing the pilot phase of a major substance abuse prevention programme for second level schools. It is envisaged that these materials — along with appropriate training where it is required — will be made more widely available during the coming school year.

The health promotion unit has, for a number of years, supported the Catholic Social Service Conference in enabling it to run training programmes in drug education for primary teachers. In addition it made £5,000 available to the conference in 1992 to support the Leader element of this drug awareness programme. This one-off grant was provided in the knowledge that this programme had the possibility of receiving support from other State agencies and the European Commission. While my Department was very pleased to be able to support this project last year the health promotion unit is not in a position to make ongoing support of this nature available to projects of this kind. The resources have to be used sparingly in the context of many competing demands and the primary function of grants of this kind is to act as seed money to stimulate and initiate but not to provide core funding for ongoing services.

It is for these reasons that the Department is not in a position to make a grant available for this project again this year.