Communities To Protest “Slash and Burn” Policies of Government

Thousands of Community Sector workers will play a leading role in this Saturday’s Anti-Austerity March in Dublin. SIPTU’s Communities Against Cuts campaign is mobilising workers from right across the Community sector which has seen cuts of between 35 and 50% in core funding to vital services such as childcare, disability, mental health, youth and environmental work.

Community Employment (CE) Schemes and Local Community Development Partnership Companies (LCDP’s) have been particularly badly hit with many companies struggling to survive.

According to SIPTU’s Community Campaign Co-ordinator Darragh O’Connor  “ LCDP’s created over 6000 new jobs in 2011 at a cost of just €5000 per job  compared to a cost of over €12000 for each job created by Enterprise Ireland. How can it make sense to have their budgets cut again? Many childcare CE projects are on the point of collapse because of changes made to entitlements for lone parents. A continuance of this “slash and burn” approach in this next budget will bring about the closure of many of these companies along with the loss of vital community services.”

Elaine Harvey from the Galway City Partnership explained “We are organising through SIPTU to defend our jobs and our services. On Saturday we will send a strong message to government-if you continue to cut our funding, our communities will take the fight directly to the doorsteps of the politicians who vote for these cuts. There will be no hiding place.”

The Communities Against Cuts Campaign is one of the four main organisations behind Saturdays march alongside The Dublin Council of Trade Unions, The Spectacle of Defiance and Hope and the Campaign against Household and Water Taxes. Marchers will assemble at Parnell Square from 1pm this Saturday 24^th November.

CE Cutbacks Leading to Exclusion of Lone Parents

SIPTU Press Release: 13th November 2012

New figures from the Department of Social Protection have shown a dramatic fall in the participation rate of lone parents in Community Employment (CE) schemes, according to SIPTU. Replying to a parliamentary question on 8^th November Minister for Social Protection, Joan Burton, confirmed that just 3060 lone parents were working on such schemes to the end of September this year, compared to 4508 for the same period last year - a drop of 33%. This fall follows cuts to payments for lone parents in last December’s budget restricting them to a single payment while on CE, and making no allowance for costs such as childcare.

The drop off in participation by lone parents has had a particularly detrimental effect on community childcare schemes, many of which are supported through Community Employment. 

SIPTU Community Sector Organiser Darragh O’Connor explained: “Lone parents have played a major role in the staffing and success of CE Childcare schemes, but this route out of welfare and back to work has effectively been closed due to budget cutbacks. It is ironic that in the wake of the ‘Yes’ vote in the Children’s referendum affordable community childcare services are struggling to survive because of these cuts.”

Reacting to the figures Stuart Duffin from One Family, Ireland’s leading organisation for one-parent families said:  “Community Employment provided a gateway to work for many lone-parents. That gateway has narrowed following the cuts in last year’s budget which saw the poorest families and children becoming even poorer as a direct result of the ill-thought out changes. The Government needs to support the engagement of lone parents in community employment and help to make work pay for them and their families.”