Cuts will hit communities
These cutbacks will be highlighted in a nationwide celebratory day to showcase the work of community projects, on Friday, September 10.
By recognising the good work in these projects, the organisers aim to highlight the effect of cutbacks, but in a positive way.
Evolving from the Social Economy Programme, the aim of the CSP is to support voluntary and community groups providing local services.
Such groups aim to alleviate disadvantage, promote social and economic development, employ those most distant from the labour market, and strengthen local decision-making.
CSP is one of the ways that boom economy funding was transferred to disadvantaged sectors.
For example, isolated older people benefit from services such as meals on wheels, visitation and security measures, day care, minor healthcare such as chiropody, even something as minor as a weekly phone call and chat for older, isolated people. Last year, a senior advice helpline received more than 13,000 calls from older people. Services are also provided for people with disabilities.
Upwards of 420 CSP projects nationwide employ in excess of 2,700 people, who were previously long-term unemployed.
They have already been hit by cuts in funding over the past two years, making them more dependent on trading and other income sources.
Many potentially viable, worthwhile projects have been put on hold at the incubation stage.
The campaign organisation for rural communities, Irish Rural Link, will organise the celebratory day, together with the CSP network.
According to Irish Rural Link, CSP projects employ people who would otherwise be depending on social welfare, to deliver vital services that would otherwise have to be provided direct by the State at far greater cost.
Their fight for CSP funding is supported by a study in Mayo which indicated that every euro of Government spending in the CSP generates €5 for the local economy. However, valid as their case is, no argument can avert the danger of the country running out of money for social programmes.
Therefore, this celebratory day is also a timely reminder to ordinary people that they may have to help their neighbour, if the Government cannot afford to.
It’s bad enough that the short-lived economic boom could set the most disadvantaged adrift, but it would be a total disaster if the comfortable times of increased government funding for social programmes will leave behind communities which cannot look after their disadvantaged without being paid for it. We may be going back to the bad old days, but the good old days when neighbours helped each other out should not be forgotten.
