Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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In July 2023, I launched the new Public Library Strategy 2023-2027 "The Library is the Place: Information, Recreation, Inspiration". This sets out 66 strategic actions under 9 strategic objectives and 3 strategic enablers for our public libraries, for the next five years. It is an ambitious forward-looking strategy which sets the direction of travel for the public library service and seeks to improve access, use and visibility of public libraries as an essential community service.

The strategy contains proposals to promote library use through national and local promotional campaigns and the provision of training to library staff on marketing and communications. The following initiatives will also help increase library membership and participation:

• Ireland Reads - a Government initiative funded by Healthy Ireland and supported by public libraries and many organisations that promote literacy and the arts. On Saturday 24^th February, the people of Ireland were encouraged to take time out of their busy lives to ‘Get Lost in a Book’ and drop into their local library for Ireland Reads Day.
• Another such initiative is the first National Library Open Day which is planned for later this year.
• The First Five Little Library programme was started in 2021 and for 2022 and 2023, the My Little Library Bag initiative was delivered to support 4 and 5 year olds starting school and encourage them to join the library. In 2023, approximately 54% of the population of 4 and 5 year olds starting school availed of the programme..

The following table provides the numbers of registered library members over the past five years. It should be noted that a change in the duration of library membership in 2019, as well as the impact of an automatic re-registration process put in place during the pandemic in 2020 when library buildings were closed, mean that direct comparisons of membership figures in 2019, 2020 and later years would not be completely accurate. Nevertheless, the trend is increasing growth in membership since the pandemic period concluded.

	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023
Members (registered)	885,971	1,036,062	483,433	765,000	784,618