Voluntary and community groups have expressed outrage at a decision by the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs to readvertise a €2.5 million funding scheme more than a year after the initial closing date for applications.
The Community Platform, an umbrella organisation of 26 national organisations including Age Action Ireland, the Society of St Vincent de Paul and Threshold, said the decision breached the spirit of the White Paper, Supporting Voluntary Activity, to which the Government was supposedly committed.
In a briefing paper circulated this week, the group accused the Department's Minister of State, Mr Noel Ahern, of adopting a "hostile" attitude to the community sector.
It further claimed that Mr Ahern last month told the White Paper's Implementation and Advisory Group (IAG), on which a number of representatives from the voluntary sector sit, that he had not yet read the White Paper, "although he had been in office over six months".
Speaking to The Irish Times last night, Mr Ahern admitted he might not have read every chapter of the policy document, "but I've read significant portions of it".
Denying the claim of hostility, he added: "All of us are anxious to move things forward as quickly as possible. We are fully committed to the White Paper.
"The money is there, and it will be spent but not necessarily over the three-year period as originally planned."
In a letter to the IAG last week, the Department blamed "a number of legal issues" for its decision to readvertise the Funding Scheme for Networks and Federations, the original closing date for which was November 2001.
Mr Ahern said these included questions over the definition of eligible organisations and a potential conflict of interest in the process, given that a number of groups were both applicants and members of the IAG, which recommended where the funding should go.
However, Ms Ronnie Fay, director of Pavee Point, another member of the Community Platform, described these issues as "red herrings".
She noted that protocols were in place whereby people exempted themselves from considering funding applications in which they were involved.
She added that while the decision did not put projects under threat of collapse it had prevented groups from pursuing planned policy work. "This is what the Government is threatened by. They don't want us sticking our noses into policy," she said.
This was despite the fact that a core aspect of the White Paper was the involvement of community and voluntary groups in policy formation.
Last month the senior Minister in the Department, Mr Ó Cuív, told the Dáil that the funding had been delayed due to "a small number of administrative matters" which would be finalised shortly.
There are also delays in allocating funding under a €3.17 million White Paper training and supports scheme, for which applications closed last May.
