With the permission of the Chair, may I ask a question on SICAP? In all the briefs we receive, there is a fetish for numbers. As the Minister of State knows, however, the temptation is to go for the low-hanging fruit, namely, the person nearest to the labour market who might get into it without any assistance. This means that a company can tell the Department and the auditor what a great job it has done because it has placed a certain number of people in employment. The reality is that SICAP was to focus on the people who would find it most difficult to gain employment, namely, those who are farthest removed from the opportunity to work.
We need to have a frank discussion on ensuring that we really go into the areas of most deprivation and cater for the people who are furthest away. I think the Minister of State needs to have a discussion with his ministerial colleague in the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection. As he knows - I have been saying this throughout my 20 years in politics - the system and a certain number of politicians seem to believe that everybody will get a commercial job. I know the Minister of State works on the ground with the real people. I know that we all get people visiting our constituency offices who will never get conventional commercial jobs. There should be a link between SICAP and getting people on the first step of the ladder. If they jump the second step, that is brilliant; if they become multimillionaires, that is even better. In the meantime, however, let us be realistic. We know the effect that people being unemployed and idle all day has on their children. We also know that there are problems with illness in some cases and addiction issues in others. I am of the view that if we could get those to whom I refer into schemes - community employment schemes, Tús schemes or whatever - as a first step in order that they have a purpose in life and a reason to get up in the morning, that would be welcome. Good and well if they progress and good and well if they do not. They would still be doing a lot better than if they were doing nothing.
I have a concern about the RAPID programme. My concern is simple. We had mapped out the RAPID programme areas and these areas stand out starkly. There are poor people everywhere but what we know is that the neighbourhood effect of poverty multiplies the deprivation that people suffer. We know, for example, that if all the children in a really deprived area attend the same school, the issues are multiplied. It more difficult for people to avoid getting involved in drugs and harder to do well in education because the culture is to be "agin you" all the time. Has the RAPID programme got a reference to those areas or to more newly mapped areas? Obviously, areas of deprivation have to be updated but the concept of the programme being focused on these hard-to-get-to areas, many of which are around the M50 and in the city centre, parts of which are booming and others of which are bust. Certain parts of Ballina, Galway city and Limerick city - although it is quite widespread across the latter - suffer deprivation. Is the RAPID programme for those areas?
This leads me to my final question. There were two elements to the RAPID programme. First, the direct fund that was used to co-finance actions with local authorities or other agencies. This included a top-up on capital sports projects so that if a sports facility was being built, those involved were not obliged to collect as much money. There was a further element to it that was really useful whereby Departments were told that when they were assessing applications for capital sports grants, those from RAPID areas were entitled to get five extra points just because those areas were designated under the programme. We established the area implementation teams and we went to every Department and agency and asked questions. For example, we asked what the Garda could do in the context of providing additional community policing in RAPID areas. We asked FÁS, as it was at the time, what it could do in terms of providing special training courses outside the centres and right in the heart of the areas in question in order that people would attend them. We also asked what the teams assessing capital sports grant applications could to in the context of giving extra marks in order that, all things being equal, the RAPID areas would have an advantage. In most cases, those areas, due to their very nature, are at a disadvantage.
People who had to live in housing estates that were in the RAPID areas were on the local area implementation teams. These people walked the walk and talked the talk every day of their lives. I am worried that local community development committees, LCDCs, will get this and will try to manipulate it into every area, except those that are the poorest. The problem towns in County Galway are Tuam and Ballinasloe. In that context, it would be very noble of a county-wide LCDC to make sure that everything is focused towards not only on Tuam and Ballinasloe but also on the really deprived part of both towns. I am not trying to attack the Minister of State; it is just that I have a genuine concern in this regard. What is the Minister of State doing to ensure that what I have outlined will not happen? Nature will out in these cases.
