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Seanad
‹ Order of Business

Community development funding changes

Summary

Senator Cullinane supports concerns about the realignment of local area partnerships, jobs and the loss of a bottom-up community-development approach, while criticising successive governments.

I was at the protest yesterday outside the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government in support of all the community workers about which Senator Aideen Hayden spoke. She is correct regarding all the issues she raised. There are real concerns over the realignment process, the future of jobs in the sector and the erosion and undermining of the bottom-up approach to community development, not only by the current Government but also by the previous one. All of this came from the Putting People First legislation that the former Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Mr. Phil Hogan, dealt with in this Seanad. The Labour Party supported it. We tabled a series of amendments on all these issues.

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It was not meant to work like this.

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Senator Trevor Ó Clochartaigh and I tabled many amendments on all these issues and all were voted down by the Labour Party, including, I suspect, the Senator. It would be interesting to examine these amendments and what was said in the Seanad at the time to see who has been proved right.

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