Ruairí Quinn
Ceist:4 Mr. Quinn asked the Taoiseach the date of the next scheduled meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Social Inclusion and Drugs; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [14231/98]
Ceisteanna—Questions. - Committee on Social Inclusion and Drugs.
The next meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Social Inclusion and Drugs is scheduled for 1 July 1998. The committee has met on five occasions to date: 9 October 1997, 13 January 1998, 18 February 1998, 23 April 1998 and 10 June 1998. As the Deputy is aware, the purpose of the Cabinet committee is to give political direction and leadership and to demonstrate the collective commitment of the Government to dealing with problems of social inclusion. The committee assesses progress on the strategies being employed to deal with poverty and disadvantage, namely the national anti-poverty strategy, the national drugs strategy and the local urban and rural development operational programme, and resolves any policy or organisational problems which might inhibit an effective response.
At its last meeting on 10 June the Cabinet committee agreed detailed criteria for the operation of the £30 million young people's facilities and services fund, including a definition of the target group. These criteria will be used by the local development groups in drawing their plans for spending £20 million in the 13 task force areas. They also include the criteria by which the plans and their component projects will be assessed by the assessment committee chaired by my Department.
The Cabinet committee also agreed to make available a minimum level of £1 million to each task force area over the three years of the fund, subject to the submission of plans which meet the overall objective of the fund and the eligibility and evaluation criteria. The additional £7 million will be allocated to projects which meet identified gaps and needs in the area or across a number of task force areas and meet the objectives and criteria set out for the fund.
The Cabinet committee has set a three month deadline of the end of September for submission of the plans to the assessment committee. In this timeframe, each development group will profile its area, consult as widely as possible, invite and consider proposals from community/voluntary and statutory organisations with a view to drawing up an integrated plan which is clearly focused on the needs of the target group.
In addition, the Cabinet committee agreed that a technical assistance provision of £150,000 from the overall £20 million would be made available to the development groups to acquire the resources to enable them to prepare the plans. A maximum of £11,500 will be provided to each development group for this purpose and allocations will be made on the basis of satisfactory submissions to the assessment committee from the development groups.
While there is a sense of much activity at community level in many of the areas in Dublin worst affected by the drugs problem, the issue of combating drugs has slipped from the Government's agenda. People are working very hard to try to stand still. The problem is not abating. Many have concluded there are serious gaps in tackling educational disadvantage. Does the Minister of State agree with the view shared by many working at local level that the Department of Education and Science needs to get seriously involved in tackling the area of educational disadvantage if we are to make any progress in tackling the drugs problem? Does the Cabinet committee intend to deal with this area in the near future or possibly at its July meeting?
I disagree with the Deputy's suggestion that the combating of drugs has slipped from the Government's agenda. I am the Minister of State responsible for the national drugs strategy. It occupies a considerable amount of my time and I am very encouraged by the excellent work undertaken by the 13 local drugs task forces. Nobody expected them to deliver immediately on every issue and policy implementation, be it a project or a service. However, significant progress is being made in these areas which should also be taken in conjunction with the young people's facilities and services fund. The implementation of projects and services associated with that fund will make a further considerable impact on combating the misuse of drugs. We are involving the VEC as one of the three elements of the development group because of its considerable expertise in this area. The other elements are the local authority and the local drugs task force, which is expected to provide the chairperson for the development group.
The Minister of State has not addressed my question on the tackling of educational disadvantage. Does he accept that in a number of areas, most notably education, voluntary efforts cannot fill the gap, that unless the Department of Education and Science takes its responsibilities seriously in terms of tackling educational disadvantage in a structured way, efforts to tackle the problem at community level will not succeed and that the arm of the State needs to play its part also? What proposal has the Government, if any, to ensure that the Department of Education and Science becomes fully involved in this campaign?
The Department of Education and Science is one of the primary Departments delivering services to the areas we are discussing in terms of the misuse of drugs and it has an important role in that area. My colleague has brought forward a number of initiatives. We are involving the VEC, a strong arm of the Department of Education and Science, in our fight in the 13 local drug task force areas. Other Departments also have a significant role to play and are being targeted in terms of work they do through the Cabinet Subcommittee on Social Inclusion and Drugs. Each of the primary service delivery Departments has a significant role to play, no less than the Department of Education and Science.
The Minister of State indicated that the committee of which, I understand, he is chairperson is responsible for the implementation of the national anti-poverty strategy. Has his committee carried out an audit of the 1997-8 budget in terms of its impact on the categories outlined in the national anti-poverty strategy as requiring assistance? If that committee has not requested or organised such an audit, does it intend to do so? It does not make sense to establish targets in a national anti-poverty strategy, implement a budget and not take into account what impact it will have on those targets.
The Minister of State outlined the way £20 million pounds of the £30 million youth fund to which he referred would be spent in the 13 local drug task force areas. Will he indicate what way the remaining £10 million will be spent and what mechanisms have been put in place to dispense that money? He also indicated that the committee had decided on a definition of a target group. Will he indicate that definition?
The Taoiseach is the chairperson of the Cabinet Subcommittee on Social Inclusion and Drugs. I am a member of it as are a number of my Cabinet colleagues. On the anti-poverty strategy, the baseline document is being fed into the Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs and it will come before the Cabinet subcommittee. I understand, my colleague, the Minister for Social, Community and Family Affairs, will publish that baseline document fairly soon.
On the £10 million to which the Deputy referred, we are drawing up proposals on accessing that fund for submission to Government. It is expected that money will be utilised and targeted at areas outside the local drug task force areas in which there is an emerging misuse of drugs problem or the potential for such a problem to arise. The money will also be used to support national organisations, voluntary or community organisations which have a remit or an interest in combating the misuse of drugs. That is how the £10 million will be accessed and we will publish details on that as soon as possible.
I accept the commitment and the amount of work the Minister of State has done on this issue. Does he accept that social deprivation and educational disadvantage are at the root of the heroin problem in Dublin? Does he also accept as some of the task forces, including the north inner city one, have communicated to him in writing, that when efforts are being made to deal with the heroin problem in one of the worst areas affected by it, in the north inner city, it does not make sense that virtually all the schools in that area have been told they are to lose teachers? Arising from the question, will the Minister of State convey my concerns and those of the north inner city task force on this issue to the next meeting of the Cabinet subcommittee on social inclusion? Will he ask that the decision to withdraw teachers be reviewed and reversed?
I take Deputy Gregory's and others' comments seriously and I will convey their concerns on educational disadvantage and teachers to the next meeting of the Cabinet subcommittee on social inclusion.
I omitted to provide information sought by Deputy De Rossa with regard to eligibility and evaluation for the young peoples' facilities and services fund. It is a detailed document which I will make available to the Deputy. It sets out the objectives of the fund and the guidelines. The guidelines provide funding under five broad headings — the enhancement and integration of existing facilities and services for young people in the target areas; the development of new viable facilities and amenities, including sporting and recreational facilities, in the areas where a gap has been identified; the development of strategies to attract "at risk" young people into facilities; the development of additional youth services for the target group and the provision of support to voluntary and community groups and organisations working with "at risk" young people.
In the past, grant aid for recreation tended to be for buildings. We accept that they are an essential element in the fight against the misuse of drugs. However, there are many voluntary and community organisations, including sporting and recreational organisations, operating in these areas who are strapped for cash, to put it mildly, and who spend their time trying to raise meagre resources to allow them to provide their services. This fund will address that issue. Local clubs and organisations will be able to seek funding, not just for buildings but also to enable them to provide their services on an annual basis. This is an important issue for many of the organisations working on a voluntary basis in the target areas to which I referred.
In the context of the questions put by Deputies, will the Minister of State accept that reference to deprived communities also includes educational deprivation? Will he acknowledge that the decisions to withdraw teachers from deprived areas mentioned by Deputies impact on areas which require additional teachers and run counter to the strategy he is operating? Will he indicate the protocols in place with regard to the management of the Cabinet subcommittee to ensure that decisions of this nature made by the Department of Education and Science are filtered through the subcommittee? Will he indicate whether to date such decisions were raised for discussion at the subcommittee and whether he will take steps to ensure that future decisions will be discussed by the subcommittee? Deprived communities should get additional educational facilities and not have teachers withdrawn because their schools fall one or two pupils short of the quota.
I take the Deputy's point seriously. I have some responsibility for advancing the work of the Cabinet Subcommittee on Social Inclusion and Drugs from my local development brief. One of the approaches the subcommittee is taking is the integrated pilot project which concentrates on four areas and which has been referred to in detail in the House previously. That project will tackle in a co-ordinated way the issues raised by Deputies. It seeks to bring together in a focused way the operations of the major players in areas of most disadvantage to ensure co-ordination in the delivery of their services. The pilot project will also seek to identify gaps in those services and it will have to address the issue of additionality of resources if we are to have an impact in the areas of most disadvantage. The issues the Deputies have raised here with regard to individual Departments will find expression through the action plans to be brought forward from the pilot projects, which I expect to bring to the Cabinet subcommittee and to the Government by the autumn.
The issue raised by Deputy Gregory is obviously pressing, and very important. Does the Minister of State accept there are much wider issues concerning educational disadvantage, which are not being tackled by the Government? For example, since it came into office there has been no extension in the disadvantaged areas, early start and Breaking the Cycle schemes, three important elements in tackling educational disadvantage. I stated earlier while there is activity at community level and funding is provided at task force level, community and voluntary effort cannot fill the gap which has been left by the Department of Education and Science because of the Minister's failure to provide solutions to the major problem of educational disadvantage, which is at the root of our heroin problem. This is wider than simply an immediate problem with staffing levels. There seems to be no indication from the Government that such disadvantage will be tackled in a serious manner. Will the Minister of State give us a commitment that this issue will be raised as a matter of urgency at the next Cabinet subcommittee meeting?
I already indicated my willingness to bring the concerns of the Deputies on this matter to the Cabinet subcommittee on social inclusion. Education has the capacity to make an important contribution to tackling the misuse of drugs, but that does not allow other Departments off the hook. They have a significant role to play in the manner in which they deliver services or through agencies, such as the vocational education committees and local authorities. The failure over successive decades to provide a proper co-ordinated delivery of services, facilities and resources into areas now suffering the ravages of drug misuse is the kernel of the problem and we must intervene directly not just through one Department but in a co-ordinated way covering many Departments whether they deliver services currently or need to improve delivery with additional resources. These issues need to be co-ordinated, otherwise, we will make little progress in tackling the underlying causes of drug misuse.
Education has a very important role to play, as do the Departments of Health and Children, Environment and Local Government, Enterprise, Trade and Employment and my own. Our objective in the pilot projects is to challenge the possibility of making a significant difference in a short time. That is why the action plan which will refer to all these issues will be brought to the Cabinet subcommittee by me before the autumn and we are on target to achieve that objective.
The Minister is correct that there must be a co-ordinated delivery of services and the cabinet subcommittee presumably oversees that and makes the decision on which services are to be provided. My earlier question where I asked the Minster of State what audit, if any, the subcommittee has carried out on the 1998 budget in terms of the impact on the targets set in the national anti-poverty strategy is, therefore, a key question. Is the committee having an audit carried out of the decisions made by various Departments in their input to this year's budget? What audit is being made into the impact on the targets set in the national anti-poverty strategy as a result of the budget? That is a key question reflected in the document recently published by the Department of Education and Science and circulated to schools in areas which the current and previous Government have targeted as disadvantaged areas needing specific attention, which states they will lose teachers next September. That is not acceptable — the committee is either serious about dealing with poverty and social exclusion or it is not, and if not we should end the pretence.
It is strongly committed to dealing with poverty and the Cabinet sub-committee has made considerable progress. I mentioned some of the issues over which I have direct control and on which I expect to make further progress this year. The Deputy raised a number of questions on education matters which might be more appropriately addressed to the Minister for Education and Science.
In regard to poverty proofing, one of the first issues to be addressed by the committee chaired by my colleague, the Minister for Social, Community and Family Affairs, relates to Partnership 2000, which highlights the need to strengthen administrative procedures for equality proofing in the context of the national anti-poverty strategy. I understand the IDPC has met the social partners to discuss proofing policies and further meetings are planned. A framework setting out an agreed approach to poverty proofing will be produced following consultation with all the relevant partners. Once agreed, the proposal will be brought to the Cabinet sub-committee for approval. That is an indication of what my colleague, the Minister for Social, Community and Family Affairs is doing and how it will be fed into the Cabinet sub-committee of which he and I are members.
The Minister for Education and Science is taking teachers from schools in disadvantaged areas. The left hand does not know what the right hand is doing.