The Dublin Employment Pact has called for more than £553 million of the National Development Plan's funds to be targeted at the 264,000 people living in the most disadvantaged areas of the Dublin region.
A study commissioned by the DEP shows the capital's poor are becoming increasingly concentrated in deprived areas during the current boom. Forty per cent of people in Dublin Corporation's administrative area live in disadvantaged communities, com pared with 23 per cent in south Dublin, 9 per cent in Fingal and 3 per cent in Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown.
Out of 1,056,674 people living in the greater Dublin area, 264,101 are located in communities suffering from high unemployment and having a high proportion of early school leavers, lone parents, large families and the elderly. Almost three-quarters of these people live in Dublin city, where long-term unemployed and other problems affecting the older disadvantaged predominate.
The study, prepared by Good body economic consultants, was published yesterday at a DEP conference in Howth, Co Dublin. It recommends that £146 million be put into social housing projects and £33 million a year into funding social and community schemes that might be adversely affected by the winding down of community employment.
Other proposals include £32.5 million for swimming pools, £15.4 million for preschool and after-school childcare facilities, £14 million for business incubation units, £25 million for art and community resource centres, £8 million for sports and leisure complexes, £1.5 million for parks, £600,000 for community transport and £500,000 for mobile libraries.
Mr David Connolly, DEP's chairman, said basic services needed to be restored to these communities, "home to a quarter of the population", if the people there were to have access to the labour market and share in our prosperity. DEP's director, Mr Philip O'Connor, said we now had "a uniquely positive policy environment" to combat long-term unemployment.
The DEP is a partnership project supported by the trade unions, employers, political parties and statutory bodies.
At yesterday's launch, SIPTU economist Mr Paul Sweeney said that despite the focus on the west in the National Development Plan, Dublin still needed inward investment.
What was particularly essential was "solid blue-collar industrial jobs, as most older unemployed men will otherwise remain excluded from the Celtic Tiger".
IBEC's regional director, Mr Matt Moran, said there was "unprecedented demand" for workers and that "vacancies exist right across the board". The question employers were asking was, "Can we get these people into the labour force? In IBEC's view we must." It was vital people obtained "the skills and education to work". That was "the only way that these blackspots will be eliminated".