Up to 1,000 community workers and employers have marched on the Department of Finance this afternoon in protest at what Siptu says are "hundreds of millions" in cuts to the community sector.
The march followed a protest meeting in Liberty Hall which heard that many community organisations are at risk of closure in the coming months due to the severity of budget cuts.
Projects worst affected by cuts include the National Drugs Strategy which has had a 17 per cent cut in funding for projects; Community Employment training with a budget cut of 40 per cent; the National Women's Strategy cut by €9 million; and the end of capital funding for childcare facilities.
Impact branch secretary Una O'Connor said the sector had been denied the necessary funding during the boom years.
"We were always seen by the Government as a way of delivering public services on the cheap."
The understandable decline in charitable donations coupled with the "savage" budget cuts meant the future existence of many essential service providers was now in doubt, she said.
"Many organisations are now in crisis. Many will will not be here at the end of the summer let alone the end of the recession."
Communities that depend on community drugs, housing, employment, childcare and rape crisis services faced a "silent catastrophe" as organisations struggled to survive.
"Every cut in community sector funding means dashed hopes for unemployed young people, less help for victims of rape, fewer refuges for victims of domestic violence, more dangerous nights on the street for our homeless, more disadvantaged women passing up rare job opportunities because they can't get affordable childcare, and more young people condemned to a short lifetime of drug addiction," she said.
Siptu community branch president David Connolly said the cuts were particularly short-sighted given the importance of local services in helping people to retrain and access employment in the future, and in responding to the increased social problems arising from the recession.
"We need to make sure that the capacity to maintain these services is not seriously undermined by severe cuts in funding."
The Government had consistently tried to water down or remove community services, Mr Connolly said. However, he said opposition parties were not doing enough to support the community sector.
"Across the parties there isn't the support we need. Fine Gael for instance has launched a policy document that would subsume community organisations into local authorities."
