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NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT PLAN (NDP)
The National Development Plan (NDP) is a rolling seven-year plan which sets out the country's main economic priorities within a budgetary framework for a seven-year period. The last National Development Plan produced in Ireland was launched in 2000 and seeks to ensure sustained economic growth through a variety of measures. Specific objectives outlined in the plan are as follows:
- Continuing sustainable national economic and employment growth;
- Consolidating and improving Irelands international competitiveness;
- Fostering balanced Regional Development;
- Promoting Social Inclusion.
In total EUR 19 billion is provided in the NDP specifically to promote Social Inclusion. Investment areas include:
- education and training;
- childcare;
- recreational infrastructure;
- skills development;
- community development;
- family services;
The objective is that employment is opened up to all sectors of society to counter poverty and social exclusion. The NDP also recognises that a correct overall economic environment for job creation is not sufficient to alleviate poverty in some areas and groups. Targeted interventions are provided for, primarily in the Regional Operational Programmes, to deal with these problems.
The Programme for Prosperity & Fairness:
In 2000, the Programme for Prosperity & Fairness (PPF) contained a commitment to piloting social inclusion units in a number of local authorities across the country. This commitment recognised the role of local authorities in the process of social inclusion. It also acknowledged that the role of local authorities in tackling poverty and exclusion extended beyond traditional areas such as housing and was in fact, corporate-wide.
The Programme for Prosperity and Fairness is structured as a set of five "operational frameworks," covering:
- living standards and workplace environment;
- prosperity and economic inclusion;
- social inclusion and equality;
- successful adaptation to continuing change; and
- renewing partnership.
The Programme contains a very extensive list of measures across a wide range of issues - such as housing, public transport, industrial policy and rural development as well as the pri mary trade union concerns of pay, taxation and social inclusion. While many of these measures take the form of commitments to undertake specific actions, it should be noted that on a number of issues, the Programme provides for the creation of working parties (with members representative of the social partners) which will bring forward policy recommendations during the lifetime of the Programme. In this sense, the new agreement is not the end of the discussion but a framework for further negotiations (and envisaged progress) between the social partners on a number of issues.
Social Inclusion
The Programme contains a much greater range of social inclusion and equality measures than any of its predecessors, which were firmly focused on economic issues like competitiveness and growth. These new measures should go some way towards improving the living standards of social welfare recipients, the unemployed and other disadvantaged groups.
The Programme represents a significant breakthrough for the 'social pillar', which includes a range of community and voluntary groups who were actively supported by the Congress side during the negotiations. The Programme also includes an 'escalator clause' which proposes that any additional resources resulting from levels of economic growth in excess of the forecast contained in the Programme are to be channelled into the Programme's priority objectives including social inclusion. Among the wide range of 'social inclusion' measures contained in the Programme are:
- progress towards a target for a minimum social welfare rate of £100 a week;
- a substantial increase in child benefit;
- an expansion in the supply of affordable social housing; and
- additional investment in health services
