Not all Government funding is the same. And so, often when politicians announce grandiose plans to spend large sums of money aiding and helping a particular group in society, it is often worth looking at the small print. There was a very good example of that this week, courtesy of Minister Anne Rabbitte:
Delighted to provide €3 million for the the Disability Promotion & Awareness Fund this year for various initiatives across the country that support disabled people in our communities. Applications are now open through @Rethink_Ireland. Info 👉 https://t.co/EnvPQa0Zgw @dcediy pic.twitter.com/3iokvddWFa
— Anne Rabbitte TD (@AnneRabbitte) March 9, 2023
On the face of it, an innocent voter might be forgiven for believing that the Minister is announcing, in the above clip, three million euros for people with disabilities. But that would be in error, for what the Minister is actually announcing is three million euros to “support” people with disabilities, which is a different kettle of fish altogether.
If you follow the various links the Minister posts above, and get to the nub of the issue – which very few people will – then you find that the money awarded isn’t really going to disabled people at all, but to organisations which support them in various ways.
Now, you might be forgiven for thinking here that this is a minor quibble: Organisations which support disabled people do valuable work – providing activities and bus trips and a social outlet that many such people sadly do not have. But that’s not necessarily the kind of support we are speaking about here. Read this, for example, under strand one of the funding, which is for an organisation or organisations that:
empowers people to know and claim their rights,
increases the ability and accountability of individuals and institutions who are responsible for respecting, protecting and fulfilling rights,
gives people greater opportunities to take part in shaping the decisions that impact on their human rights, and
increases the ability of those with responsibility for fulfilling rights to recognise and know how to respect those rights, and make sure they can be held to account.
Here’s a basic question: Why does Government need to fund separate organisations to “empower disabled people to know and claim their rights”? That is, after all, a basic function of Government – which is already directly funded through the citizen’s information service which receives funding for this very purpose. When you fund external organisations to do this, a portion of the funding goes on salaries and overheads, all for duplicating an already extant function of the state.
But more than that: “Increases the ability and accountability of individuals who are responsible for respecting, protecting, and fulfilling rights”.
Do they mean…. The Minister herself? This is her job, is it not? She is the Minister for People with Disabilities, so nobody has any greater responsibility to respect protect and fulfil the rights of disabled people. What she is doing here, in effect, is giving money to people for the purpose of lobbying her own department.
This is a contradiction in terms, and, this writer would argue, a perversion of the political system. We already have people responsible for holding the Minister to account: The opposition parties, the media, and, ultimately, the voters. Funding under this strand does not actually benefit disabled people at all, but it certainly does fund jobs for more lobbyists and activists under the banner of funding for disabled people.
This is a common and increasing problem across Government: The third sector – NGOs and voluntary groups – is constantly growing, often at the expense of the very people they are supposed to be helping. Consider, for example, that in the area of homelessness, homeless groups in Ireland in 2020 had funding to spend €33,000 per homeless person in Ireland. That is more money per homeless person than more than 25% of the population earn annually in salary: And yet despite that, the record in tackling homelessness is very poor.
Why? The answer is because most of that €33,000 does not go to homeless people at all: It goes on salaries, and awareness campaigns, and lobbying, and “outreach programmes” and schemes to tackle addiction and mental health and, well, you name it. Very little of the actual funding goes to housing homeless people.
It is the same here: This €3million announced for disabled people is actually going to NGOs, who will spend it – or much of it – “holding people to account”. It is money to complain, and money to campaign. It is not money to actually improve the lives of the people in whose name it is being doled out.
This system of Governing is deeply embedded across Government, at this stage. It is why the NGO sector is now a multi-billion euro sector of the economy. What value we are getting for it, though, is very much up for debate.