Minister warns State agencies against ‘empire building’ after co-operation during Covid pandemic

Minister for Community and Rural Affairs Heather Humphreys has warned State agencies against trying to build “empires” as they seek to re-assert their authority after a period of co-operation during the Covid pandemic.

She said that “sometimes you find people like to expand their little space and that’s not the way it should work. It’s about working together.”

Ms Humphreys added that “siloing and empire-building should be banned. They should not exist.”

The Minister also spoke of efforts to develop a national organisation for women “similar to the men’s sheds” because of the isolation and vulnerability experienced by many women during Covid-19.

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She said she met a group of women last week “I don’t know whether you’d call them women’s sheds, hen’s sheds, sisters’ sheds or whatever” about the development of a national organisation to mirror the men’s sheds association.

One of the women there spoke of how being in the “sisters’ shed” had transformed her world as she had felt unable to leave her home during Covid.

Ms Humphreys was responding in the Dáil to questions from Sinn Féin community development spokesman Paul Donnelly about whether her department had done a formal assessment of the impact of the pandemic on marginalised community development groups.

The Dublin West TD said there had been a “fractious relationship at times” between Government agencies and some community projects, particularly community drug teams providing supports to “especially marginalised” groups such as active drug users.

“All that was washed away during Covid, however, because everybody recognised we needed to work together” to support those who are particularly marginalised and disadvantaged, he said.

But he expressed concern that some of the lessons learned during the past two years “are being lost and that State agencies are in some ways reasserting their silo to a certain extent”, in reference to organisations not acting cohesively or communicating properly with other units or agencies.

He said that slippage “is why we need a detailed study or report into how we all worked together, what worked very well, what did not”.

Ms Humphreys said her department established a local authority community call forum with €4.2 million in funding which focused particularly on vulnerable people and a review by the National Economic and Social Forum found they had been effective in delivering support to vulnerable groups at the time.

She also highlighted a number of other financial supports including the €48.8 million stability fund which helped 863 organisations over the course of 2020 and last year.

Mr Donnelly praised the community call initiative which he said in Dublin West “delivered hundreds of meals and medication for people who were in dire need. What really struck me at the time was how isolated and vulnerable older people in particular were and those who had disabilities.”

They had to establish the lessons learned during the pandemic.

Ms Humphreys agreed with him that there were “many learnings” from Covid.

Referring to the sisters’ shed group she met about what could be done to develop a national organisation, she highlighted the case of one woman from Dublin she spoke to.

“She lost her mother during Covid and she did not leave the house during that time. She just did not have the ability or the confidence to go outside.

“Somebody set up the sisters’ sheds and invited her to go along. She told me it changed her life. Those are the types of interventions that make a difference, where you can go to a group.”