Changing Ireland Video

Minister of State Curran interview: on CDPs

The projects come from the communities themselves and what really inspires me is peoples imagination and their own approach to coming up with solutions to their problems that work.

They're so innovative and flexible and timely in their response that they're doing things the statutory agencies couldnt respond to in a short timeframe. Peoples ingenuity always astounds me.

- John Curran, Irelands Minister of State for Community Affairs (and the national Drugs Strategy), in an interview for the winter 08/09 edition of Changing Ireland.

Minister of State Curran interview: on jobs crisis

Moyross and other areas suffered unemployment rates of up to 80% in the 1980s and nobody wants a return to those days.

John Curran, the Minister of State for Community Affairs (and the national Drugs Strategy), spoke about the real challenge of unemployment and the need for urgency:

"The real challenge now is we have people losing their jobs who have the capacity to work, who have the work experience, who have discipline."

" The real challenge is that they're retrained and (quickly helped to) find alternative employment, so that they dont become disenfranchised by becoming long-term unemployed because its (then) much more difficult to get back into the workforce. "

Excerpt from an interview for the winter 08/09 edition of Changing Ireland.

Minister of State Curran interview: on being a protester

Once a protester outside the Dáil, John Curran - the Minister of State for Community Affairs (and the national Drugs Strategy) now views protests from inside Government buildings.

"I marched to the Dáil as a student Im very conscious when I see protests," he told the winter 08/09 edition of Changing Ireland