Community services around the State are being forced to close and others are under threat because of cutbacks to the community employment scheme (CES).
Three separate reviews of the scheme are currently taking place and are to be completed before the Government makes decisions about its future.
In the meantime, however, the cutbacks already in place are having a severe impact.
Examples outlined to The Irish Times include:
In Tallaght, Co Dublin, a computer company, Syscom, which trained 8,500 people over the past 12 years and depended on CES staff has just closed.
A scheme providing a range of community services in Trim, Co Meath, has had the number of participants gradually reduced from 12 to two and is to close shortly.
In east Galway, a scheme which provided employment for people with special needs has been stood down.
Another CES scheme, which at its height provided up to 25 caretakers, classroom assistants and clerical assistants for five schools in south-west Dublin has closed.
Community activists say this is just a small sample of the schemes providing vital community work which are being forced to close.
As participants go back on the dole, essential community services are being lost.
The Government's target is to have 20,000 participants on the scheme by the end of the year, down from 25,000 at the end of 2002.
Some areas, including Tallaght, however, are taking a proportionately higher cut than others.
Ms Diane Richmond, head of community and enterprise development with Partas, which runs four enterprise centres in Tallaght, said local CES projects were to have their numbers cut by 25 per cent.
A range of other job support schemes had also been cut, so long-term unemployed people in Tallaght were no longer being offered routes back to the mainstream workforce.
"The cuts are devastating for an area like Tallaght that has used the CES and other schemes very effectively to progress people back to work," she said.
"It is very difficult to see what the rationale is behind making such dramatic cuts in one year."
Even services which the Government had said would be "ring-fenced" from cuts had not emerged unscathed, she said.
Announcing the reduction in numbers last year, the Government said drugs task force, childcare and health projects would be ring-fenced from the cuts, while schemes in RAPID areas would be given priority.
RAPID is a scheme aimed at revitalising certain designated areas.
Ms Richmond said numbers on drugs schemes had been maintained, but she knew of RAPID and childcare projects which had participant numbers cut.
In answer to a written Dáil question last week, the Minister of State for Labour Affairs, Mr Frank Fahey, said the gradual reduction in community enterprise participant numbers reflected the significant reduction in the numbers of long-term unemployed.
The Government was also implementing a shift in emphasis away from work experience programmes to training, "from which there is a greater level of progression to employment", he said.
The Government was "very much aware" of the important contribution the CES had made to the development of services for local communities, and because of this a number of reviews were taking place.
One is being carried out by FÁS, another by a cross-Departmental group of senior officials, and the other by a social partnership group chaired by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment.
The FÁS review, he added, should be finalised shortly.
