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Attention Election Candidates!
What IRD Duhallow is asking the next Government to prioritise for the region
By Maura Walsh, IRD Duhallow CEO
LEADER, part of IRD Duhallow since 1991 is a European Commission programme supporting rural communities and businesses and promoting community led local development. Its ethos is based on organisations like IRD Duhallow building the capacity of local communities, earning their confidence and trust over time and supporting them with LEADER funding as well as providing practical support to implement their projects. LEADER has been the catalyst for several upgrades of our towns and villages including undergrounding electric cables and installing new LED street lighting in many places including Rathmore and Gneeveguilla. Playgrounds are now installed in almost all our towns and villages in co-operation with Local Authorities and in some instances in the past with CLÁR, this has made the wider Duhallow region much more child & family friendly. The walks around pitches and parks as well as long distance trails and looped walks have also been put in in place through LEADER. Community town parks have been upgraded and astro turf community pitches have been installed with LEADER. Practically every community centre has received support for upgrades and renovations and meeting room facilities. Several of our small and medium Enterprises have been supported to sustain and grow providing jobs, goods and services. The now familiar LEADER logo is part of almost all community facilities and businesses across Duhallow and indeed rural Ireland.
OUR ASK - To restore LEADER funding to 2008 levels in Duhallow.
LEADER
The diagram across shows how funding has been cut drastically in Duhallow from €12.4 million between 2008-2013 to just €2.8 million for 2023-2027. Given the way construction prices, and the general cost of living has increased since 2008, this is a drastic cut and in our view, people living in rural Ireland and Duhallow in particular, deserve better and the Duhallow region cannot be left fall behind again. There are capital projects as well as facilities identified across all our communities for our LEADER strategy, but we simply haven’t the funding to meet the demand. We note, with some disappointment, that there is very scant reference and indeed no reference at all to LEADER in the manifestos of the main political parties. It is therefore imperative that our local candidates bring this message back to their perspective party HQs and seek support on behalf of the Duhallow region for increased LEADER funding from candidates in Cork Northwest and Kerry constituencies. We’re asking all the candidates in the Cork North-West and Kerry constituencies to support this request.
Social Inclusion
Social Inclusion is the broad programme that provides staff resources for a wide range of communities and people. Family carers; active retired and elderly; people with disabilities; mental health issues; addiction; learning difficulties; the unemployed; disadvantaged; youth; migrant workers; refugees and asylum seekers as well as those living in rural isolation with lack of resources and services including rural youth. Again, when the recession hit, and austerity was called for social inclusion budgets took a hit. 2008 €606,000 per annum. Cut in successive programmes until 2024 (just) €350,000 per annum. Austerity has passed and the government leaders are quick to tell us that there has been a fantastic economic recovery, and they have indeed improved minimum wages, social welfare payments but we have not seen a restoration of the Social Inclusion Programme Budgets which would allow us to properly address the issues and provide the supports necessary to tackle generational poverty and disadvantage.
OUR ASK – Restore Social Inclusion programme funding to the 2008 levels of €606,000 per annum.
Social Enterprises
IRD Duhallow has developed a range of regionally provided supports for rural dwellers to address their unmet needs, these include setting up Duhallow Community Food Services to provide meals on wheels and a hot school lunch service across the region. Our Community Laundry Service with collection and delivery; Warmer Homes that provides retrofitting insulation for homes and businesses as well as community facilities – thus addressing climate change in a positive way; Duhallow Furniture Revamp which is upcycling and restoring furniture that would otherwise go to landfill and also in co-operation with Cork County Council recycles paint and provides it at low cost to communities. More recently we have supported the establishment of a community garden for Social Farming and a sensory garden. These services provide jobs for over 130 local people as well as training opportunities and provide essential services to a wide range of people. While social enterprises are featured in government department plans, we would like all candidates to be aware of the importance of these services in rural areas and to pledge their support for the staffing and the ongoing development and expansion of these services.
Rural Social Scheme
The Rural Social Scheme (RSS) since its introduction in 2004 has supported over 200 Duhallow low-income farmers by paying them for part-time community work while still farming. At its inception the top up on their farm assist payment was attractive enough to encourage over 70 to take up work through IRD Duhallow. It was this resource that enabled us to test and pilot many of the social enterprises and community services. Again, when the economic crash happened the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs was abolished and the RSS was transferred to the Department of Social Protection where the payments to new RSS participants were ‘aligned’ or in other words cut to the same level as CE schemes which is €27.50 on top of their welfare payments. This has had a devastating effect on participation where Duhallow has seen numbers on the scheme drop from over 70 to just 23. Communities are constantly requesting help from RSS and to be fair to our supervisors and participants great work is being done but we no longer have the participants to allocate RSS workers to the 48 individual communities across our region.
The outgoing Minister Joe O’Brien TD did establish a review of the RSS on which IRD Duhallow had representations and it has come up with very positive recommendations, however the payments to participants was not within its remit.
Current candidates have been making representations. IRD Duhallow asks that the RSS payments be increased to attract low-income farmers so that we can give community volunteers the support they need and also keep the maximum number of farm families in Duhallow.
Tús
Tús was introduced in 2011, modelled largely on the RSS, but targeted at long term unemployed people. It provides them with one year’s work in communities and social enterprises to enhance their opportunities for getting back in the work force. It is a terrific scheme and while unemployment is only a fraction now of what it was in 2011 when we had 8 schemes, we have 3 Tús schemes operating at the moment. A big issue is the lack of affordable public transport to get participants into our base in Newmarket. We have acquired our own vehicles over the years to bring workers out on site across communities and specific jobs like developing walks and maintaining them. The strength of our Tús scheme is in no small way due to the participation of our Ukrainian community who now make up almost 50% of our workers. Participation in community work is one of the fastest most efficient ways to achieving integration and acquiring new language skills. IRD Duhallow’s ask for Tús is to reduce the qualifying criteria to 6 months unemployed and to allow participants who have finished their year on Tús to return to the scheme if they are still unemployed one year after completion.
Community Employment
CE Schemes as they are known locally provide up to 3 years parttime work to long term unemployed people and every community has benefitted hugely from the support of CE participants. IRD Duhallow is implementing the scheme for over 3 decades and has seen the benefit it has been to participants as well as communities.
OUR ASK - What we ask for CE is that the rigidity of particular placements might be eased so that the individual requirements of the unemployed person can be taken into account and bespoke work found for them.
This could be confined to a small number, say 10% of participants so that those communities that have established CE places would not lose out.
Childcare
IRD Duhallow prioritised the provision of community-based child Care throughout our region and worked with the then Equal Opportunities Child Care Programme and Pobal to establish 8 such childcare facilities across our region. These have been hugely successful and have surpassed all our expectations; they have contributed to the attractiveness of the Duhallow Region as a place to set up home and live in. Our population has stabilised and even begun to grow as a direct result of this essential infrastructure. But many of our creches are at capacity and if we want to continue to grow our population and economy, we need to look at providing further community-based crèches that will serve children from 6 months to 14 years. This will enable parents to work and have a decent standard of living.
IRD Duhallow has been providing childcare courses up to Level 9 (Master’s Degree) so that crèches can provide the best professional service through our Skillnet Programme. In all over 400 people have been trained through various levels in childcare through IRD Duhallow.
Our Ask For The New Government;
1. To introduce a capital programme to fund at least 3 more community crèches in the Duhallow Region to meet the needs of our population into the future.
2. To fund the staffing of community crèches, to support staff retention through recognising the key roles these workers play in supporting families and in the development of children especially those from disadvantaged communities.
In conclusion our Board, Management and Senior Staff at our recent Strategic Review looked at the priorities for the region for the coming years. Without doubt while we have a growing population that heralds the need for
1. More Creches. We also have a growing older population with better life expectancy.
2. Services like our Rural Meals, Community Laundry and Home Insulation service, must continue to grow and expand to support independent living for as long as possible.
3. We must look at providing locally based small scale sheltered housing developments across the region. Government and local authority policy while supporting such developments in the past had changed in the past decade to larger housing agencies. We ask therefore that Community based Sheltered Housing Units be supported so independent living is a reality.
4. Concern was also expressed that Planning Permission for the children of rural dwellers who have a site be facilitated to build on that site and form a support base for the older generation into the future.
5. Family Carers are the backbone of independent living and therefore there would be no means test for those providing essential care in the home for dependent family members.
6. Youth Clubs and Social Facilities was another concern raised at our Community Consultations and the next Government must also prioritise Youth in Social Inclusion Programmes and by providing adequate funding through LEADER much of the facilities deficits could be addressed and new community facilities be established that are fit for purpose in addition to the Sports Facilities.
7. IRD Duhallow believes that it has a continuing role to play in the climate change and biodiversity agenda. Our track record over the past 15 years especially speaks for itself. We must work with farmers and landowners rather than point the finger. Any future land use policy must take into account the EU’s Cork Declaration and support a LIVING COUNTRYSIDE. Rural areas like Duhallow must sustain their populations and grow after decades of decline. Agriculture is the backbone of our economy and our main natural resources with a competitive and a comparative advantage for top quality food production. IRD Duhallow is ideally placed to implement locally, the National Policies of the new Government and be supported to do so in the best interest of the Duhallow Region. We have always worked with all our elected Representatives and will continue to do so.
