I propose to take Questions Nos. 183 to 187, inclusive, 190 to 199, inclusive, and 201 to 204, inclusive, together.
My Department's Local and Community Development Programme (LCDP) is the largest social inclusion intervention of its kind in the State. The current Programme officially ended at the end of 2013 having operated for four years with funding of €281m over that period. It is being implemented on a transitional basis for 2014 with a budget of €47m pending the roll out of the new Social Inclusion and Community Activation Programme (SICAP) in April 2015. Some 17 Women’s Projects under the remit of the National Collective of Community Based Women's Networks (NCCWN) currently receive annual funding of €1.3 million under the LCDP. In addition, my Department also supports a number of Women’s projects under the Scheme to Support National Organisations (SSNO). This funding scheme, which supports national organisations in the community and voluntary sector, aims to provide multi-annual funding towards core costs associated with the provision of services. A new round of funding under this scheme commenced on 1 July 2014, under which the NCCWN
was allocated some €160,122 for the two year period of 1July 2014 – 30 June 2016.
The SICAP is one of my key priorities and its budget for next year will be decided in the 2015 Estimates process. The Programme's target groups are:
- Children and Families from Disadvantaged Areas
- Lone Parents
- New Communities (including Refugees/Asylum Seekers)
- People living in Disadvantaged Communities
- People with Disabilities
- Roma
- The Unemployed (including those not on the Live Register)
- Travellers
- Young Unemployed People from Disadvantaged areas
In accordance with the Public Spending Code, legal advice, good practice internationally and in order to ensure the optimum delivery of the services to clients, the Programme is subject to a public procurement process, which is currently underway. Stage one (Expression of Interest) has been completed. Stage two (Invitation to Tender), will get underway in October and will involve the successful applicants from Stage one being invited to apply to one or more Local Community Development Committees, in Local Authority areas, to deliver the programme. Contracts for SICAP will be determined following the outcome of the procurement process.
The public procurement process is a competitive process that is open to Local Development Companies, other not-for-profit community groups, commercial firms and national organisations that can provide the services to be tendered for to deliver the new Programme. In Stage one, joint applications were encouraged and organisations of varying sizes (for example smaller organisations working in consortia with larger organisations) were invited to submit joint applications. That said, I understand that some small groups, such as the groups under the remit of the NCCWN, faced a number of challenges in competing in the Stage one process. As soon as the outcome of Stage one is made known, I will be considering the implications of that for NCCWN in the context of the relevant SICAP target groups.