Minister Carey's comments on the budget and 10% cut to Dept funding

The overall reduction in the Department of Community, Equality and Gaeltacht Affairs budget for 2011 will be of the order of 10%.

For more information on the budget cuts, click here for Minister Pat Carey's statement on the four-year plan.

This is what he had to say about funding under the following sub-head:

Developing Communities

"There will continue to be an emphasis on the prioritisation of front-line services and supports to customers and beneficiaries at the expense of administration, overheads and ancillary costs."

"My Department will shortly commence a structured dialogue with the Community & Voluntary Sector with the aim of ensuring that the impact of any budgetary adjustments to the services provided by the Sector are minimised, as far as possible. To this end, my Department will be working with the sector to achieve greater consolidation, coordination and efficiencies among service providers."

For more download the document via the link (above in the text).

DAIL DEBATE ON STATUS OF CDPs (Nov 3rd)

A Dail debate on the "Status of Community Development Projects' (click here for the report) took place on November 3rd, in the run-up to the budget.

In the debate, Minister Pat Carey responded to questions from Fine Gael TD Paul Connaughton, FG's Frank Feighan and Labour's Jack Wall and the Minister indicated that staff in CDPs should not fear losing their jobs, that the focus was on frontline services. He said the Local and Community Development Programme would "enhance" community development activity across the State and argued that it would not lead to a reduction in such activity.

For more information on 'Where CDPs now stand' read our blog posting from last week.