Dublin South West TD, Se\u00e1n Crowe, has called on the Social Protection Minister, Leo Varadkar, to stop his Department\u2019s unwelcome and uncalled for meddling into local MABS and Citizens Information Services (CIS).<\/p>\n
Deputy Se\u00e1n Crowe said:<\/p>\n
\u201cThe MABS and the Citizens Information Services provide an indispensable, quality and community led service that must be protected. The current independent management of these services is drawn from the local community sector and this should be maintained not meddled with.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat concerns me most about the Minister\u2019s proposals is that it appears to be another drive towards an excessive level of centralisation. We witnessed this already with the undermining of the independence of community development programmes and the Credit Union. Somewhere in the bowels of government there seems to be a complete lack of trust in local people taking decisions to manage services in the best interests of their local community.<\/p>\n
\u201cMinister Varadkar\u2019s reasons for the restructuring and regionalising of these vital local services are in my opinion unwarranted and uncalled for. The Minister\u2019s contention that there are too many board members completely misses the point about what is valuable about locally managed decision making in services such as these. In fact the large number of board members is exactly what is unique and invaluable about these kinds of enterprises.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Minister must call a halt to the proposed restructuring plans and let MABS and CIS continue delivering grassroots support to local communities. MABS and the Citizens Information Service provide a first class and a unique service which must be enhanced and protected. The underhand manner in which the decision of re-structuring has been made by both the Department of Social Protection without proper consultation with stakeholders is unacceptable.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis week TDs voted down Minister Varadkar’s proposals to regionalise the MABS services in overwhelming numbers and the Government must respect this vote.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is unacceptable that neither MABS nor the Citizens Information Service staff have been given any explanation as to the rationale for this planned re-structuring.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is excellent work done every single day by MABS and the Citizens Information Service. Without their commitment and support we would have the most marginalised in Irish society left abandoned without any help. The current system works. It\u2019s clearly not broken then the big question is why are we wasting valuable resources trying \u2019to fix something that is delivering for thousands of citizens right across the State.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am calling on Minister Leo Varadkar to issue a policy directive to the Citizens Information Board to halt this re-structuring proposal. It was stopped back in 2007 when common sense prevailed and it should be stopped now.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
ENDS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dublin South West TD, Se\u00e1n Crowe, has called on the Social Protection Minister, Leo Varadkar, to stop his Department\u2019s unwelcome and uncalled for meddling into local MABS and Citizens Information Services (CIS). Deputy Se\u00e1n Crowe said: \u201cThe MABS and the Citizens Information Services provide an indispensable, quality and community led service that must be protected. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[307,306,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-citizen-information-service","category-mabs","category-social-protection"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3063"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3063\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3064,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3063\/revisions\/3064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}