Gilligan pledges to resist services cuts
FORMER Mayor John Gilligan has vowed to resist any cuts to community services in St Mary's parish that could arise from An Bord Snip Nua's recommendation to abolish the jobs initiative scheme.
UCD economist Colm McCarthy's report identified the €10 million programme – administered through FAS – as one that could no longer be afforded with the public finances in freefall.
But Cllr Gilligan, a team leader with St Mary's AID, has said that if the Government approved the recommendation, they would be sending out mixed messages to the community.
"We are very upset that An Bord Snip's recommendation that all jobs initiatives simply be closed down and I find it absolutely appalling on the one hand the Government are telling us they are going to spend so much money on regeneration of the areas and on the other hand they are taking out whatever supports are already there," said Cllr Gilligan.
"We have been living on promises for so long and we were hoping by now to have made a start on works on the new creche down there and starting on some of the houses.
"There is no point telling people what might be done five years down the line when they can see what is being put at risk now by the McCarthy Report."
St Mary's AID grew out a parish development group for the King's Island in the late 1960s, Cllr Gilligan explained.
"Our remit is to take a look at the parish and see what we can do to develop it. As such, we have the jobs initiative scheme. Our involvement in that scheme dates back about 12 years and it was so successful that FAS gave us a second one. We deliver 40 dinners a day for meals on wheels five days a week; prepare school lunches, but we also do a lot of environmental work around the place.
"We keep the church clean, do some of the open spaces around the place. We have people working in schools, we have an education centre, we have one person working in the creche. We are involved from the cradle to the grave in most activities going on in King's Island."
Mr McCarthy's report identifies over €5 billion in savings on public expenditure. He has said that too many community groups were being funded by Government to carry out similar tasks. So is there any duplication between what St Mary's AID does and, for example, St Mary's Community Development project?
"No I don't think there is. They come from a slightly different angle. We look after things on the ground.
"We have the JIs we have people doing everything from cutting the grass to working in creches, working with senior citizens and we even do slightly odd things at times, helping out Shannon Development over the summer when the car park for the Castle is open," said Cllr Gilligan.
Mr McCarthy last week said criticism of his proposals were out of touch with reality. He told civil servants resistant to pay cuts last week that: "This country is bust. The Government is not short of compassion, it's short of money.
"We're borrowing €400m a week, a big component of that is the public service payroll."
But Cllr Gilligan said it was Mr McCarthy who was out of touch:
"He wants the whole lot scrapped. I don't know what the people who have been dependent on it the last number of years are going to do. It doesn't make an awful lot of sense from a financial point of view because the people on jobs initiative will only end up going on to the dole and you would have to pay them redundancy as well. Even from a financial point of view it doesn't stack up. We have been on to our union, which is SIPTU, and we intend to start a campaign. There is a march planned for Limerick next month. I will be asking all our TDs to take a look at what the proposals do, that cost-benefit analysis. It doesn't make sense to do it and sends out the wrong message to disadvantaged communities that they don't care about them."
It is the Government who will ultimately decide which of the McCarthy recommendations to implement and Cllr Gilligan pledged to try and stop it in its tracks
"We plan to meet with Minister O'Dea on this and hopefully it won't even get to the Cabinet table. It is a ludicrous idea," he said.
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