Good news
Editorial stand up for communities. For instance, the McCarthy report provoked a strong reaction nationally (see our inside pages). McCarthy’s proposals remain a live issue. Also of major interest, the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs is making changes (covered in this edition). The Community Development Programme (to which magazine this magazine belongs) is to be integrated into the Local Development and Social Inclusion Programme to form a new programme, the ‘Local and Community Development Programme’. As part of that process, most of the 180 CDPs are likely to disband as companies and to integrate their work with local partnership companies. As we went to press, we learned that up to 30 CDPs will cease to be funded under the new programme.
in dire
circumstances
Good news, in dire circumstances! Next year, there’s a better chance to switch this country’s irrational focus on saving banks to saving something much more valuable – people, communities and jobs. That battle has been fought all year by Community interests campaigning to retain essential resources and jobs in communities. Now, with good timing, the EU is offering a 12-month opportunity to highlight the issues because 2010 is to be the ‘European Year for Combating Poverty and Social Exclusion’. It was supposed to be a year marking successes, because Governments across the EU swore in Lisbon in 2000 to “make a decisive impact on the eradication of poverty” by 2010. Our Government thought we had it sorted. Yes, we made gains. We introduced equality legislation, we brought in a minimum wage, we increased social welfare and pensions, we welcomed in hundreds of thousands of immigrants without racism becoming a big problem. And, for a time, we reduced unemployment to the lowest level possible.
Published By: ‘Changing Ireland’ is the national magazine of the Community Development Programme and is managed and published by the Community Development Network, Moyross, Limited, through funding from the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs. Postal address: ‘Changing Ireland’, c/o Community Enterprise Centre, Moyross, Limerick. Office base: Unit 3, Sarsfield Gardens Business Centre, Sarsfield Gardens, Moyross, Limerick. Tel Editor: 061-458011. Tel Administrator: 061-458090. Fax: 061-325300. E-mail: editor@changingireland.ie admin@changingireland.ie Website: www.changingireland. ie
Production: Editor: Allen Meagher Administrator (part-time): Tim Hourigan Research, evaluation and Facebook manager:Joe Sheehan, volunteer. Editorial team: Viv Sadd, Sean McLaughlin, Juan Carlos Azzopardi and Allen Meagher. Reporting: Articles are primarily written by Community Development workers and volunteers who have an interest in reporting. Design and print by: The Print Factory, Five Alley, Birr, Co. Offaly. W: www.printfactory.ie
Meanwhile, whole sections of society missed out: women, Travellers, the long-term unemployed, older people, rural people, lone parents, residents of many crime-beset local authority estates, to name but some. The unemployment blackspots persisted and the rich-poor gap became the 2nd largest in the Western world. Now, the achievements of the last ten years are unraveling or being dismantled in front of our eyes. The crisis is in your face, but we have advantages that weren’t there in the 1980s. The employment equality legislation and recognition for minorities wasn’t there last time around. Yet, one suspects that the Government is depending on the global economy to rise so that people can emigrate rather than revolt. For those who cannot emigrate or choose not to, it is better they live at least with more dignity than people had in the past when to be extremely poor carried great stigma and shame and attracted sympathy and handouts rather than empowering interventions.
Thanks To . . . ‘Changing Ireland’ thanks everyone involved in the production of Issue 30.
Disclaimer The views expressed in this newsletter are those of the author concerned. They do not, by any means, necessarily reflect the views of the Editor, the editorial team, the management committee of the Community Development Network, Moyross, Ltd., or the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs.
2010 is a crucial year in changing Ireland’s direction. We need to recover our sense of honesty, humility, empathy, outrage, humanity and our tidy little democratic system needs whatever it takes to dislodge the limpet-like elite in this country from their rock and to smash their shell so they don’t lock on again. Right now, the Community Sector is suffering and the EU’s Year provides communities and interest groups with an opportunity to highlight what causes poverty and what it will take to solve it. The Sector – with trade union support - has shown it can
Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there
Front cover photo: Seated at the top table in Croke Park for an ‘information meeting’ about the new ‘Local and Community Development Programme’ were principal officers Clodagh McDonnell and Seamus Jackson of the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs and Jerry Murphy of Pobal. Photo: A Meagher
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