Joe O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Denis Naughten, the Chair of this joint committee, and the committee members for the invitation to appear before the committee and provide an update on the implementation of the Roadmap for Social Inclusion.

I have responsibility for policy areas in two Departments which are complementary - social inclusion and community development. It is safe to say that one cannot exist without the other. This is reflected in the Roadmap for Social Inclusion, which notes the important and long-acknowledged partnership between the State and the community and voluntary sector in addressing poverty, social exclusion and inequality at a local and national level.

The Roadmap for Social Inclusion 2020-2025 was approved by the then Government and published in January 2020. It is the latest in a number of successive strategies dating back to 1997 which aim to reduce poverty and improve social inclusion in Ireland. In a matter of weeks after its publication, Ireland had to deal with the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic and the introduction of resultant public health restrictions on our lives. Nevertheless, its implementation remains a priority - one that is reflected in the programme for Government as well which commits to its rigorous implementation.

The roadmap is a five-year whole-of-government strategy with the ambition of reducing consistent poverty to 2% or less, and making Ireland one of the most socially inclusive countries in the EU. This will require improvements in the provision of support for workers and their families, the expansion of employment opportunities to all who are in a position to work, continued improvements in supports for children, older people and people with a disability, ongoing investment at community level, and ensuring access for all to basic services that we all need to thrive. Under the current conditions within the economy and social and health challenges resulting from the pandemic, this is ambitious and will require focused and collaborative effort across Government.

The roadmap acknowledges the range of existing sectoral strategies, policies and plans across Government and does not seek to duplicate them. It aims to enhance and complement existing strategies and inform the development of new strategies, such as the recently published national volunteering strategy, to ensure that social inclusion is at the core of Government policy.

The roadmap contains 66 commitments to be delivered, in some cases by individual Departments and in others by a number of Departments working in collaboration, such as the Department of Social Protection and the Department of Justice to implement the additional three weeks parental leave in April this year and will be extended to seven weeks over the subsequent three years.

Implementation of many of the roadmap commitments is under way and a number are either fully achieved or close to completion. These include the publication of the new further education and training strategy, the full roll-out of the national childcare scheme, and the publication of the volunteering strategy, as I mentioned.

There has also been progress in the development of the new employment services strategy, the successor to Pathways to Work; the provision of €5 million in dormant accounts funding to support and improve employment opportunities for carers and people with a disability; the development of the new rural development policy which is due to be published next week; the development of a ten-year adult literacy, numeracy and digital literacy strategy which was announced in September 2020; and, the continued provision of the school meals programme during 2020, including during school closures and during the summer where needed.

In addition, despite the challenging economic circumstances, budget 2021 included targeted social protection measures to help individuals and families on low incomes. This included, among other changes, increases to the qualified child rates which will benefit some 419,000 children at a cost of €59 million in 2021; adjustment of the income thresholds for the working family payment with some 48,000 families benefiting in 2021 at a cost of €21 million; an increase to the living alone allowance which will benefit some 22,000 people; and, an increase to the weekly rate for the fuel allowance benefiting some 375,000 people at a cost of €36 million in 2021. I was also pleased that budget 2021 included a provision for new pilot community development projects with funding of €1 million available in 2021. Applications for this fund are currently open.

As Minister of State in the Department of Social Protection, I have responsibility for the community employment, CE, scheme, Tús and the rural social scheme. These schemes meet a number of departmental objectives, including supporting long-term unemployed people in returning to employment, while helping to deliver vital services to local communities.

Support and funding remained in place for over 19,000 participants engaged in more than 850 CE schemes and over 7,000 participants in Tús and the rural social scheme since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020. Funding for CE, Tús and the rural social scheme will amount to more than €500 million in 2021. During each period of level-5 restrictions, CE and Tús participants, whose contracts were due to end during the period of the restrictions, had contracts extended for the duration of those restrictions. Earlier this month, the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, and I announced a further CE and Tús contract extension for those participants who are affected, up until 2 July 2021. Over 7,000 CE and Tús participants are benefiting from these contract extensions. There will be no sudden cliff edge or cut-off point for these contracts after this date. Contracts will come to an end in a phased and planned manner after this date as the number of new referrals to schemes increases as restrictions ease. It is particularly important that CE schemes continue to offer those who have not had a chance to be on a CE scheme in the past and who are furthest from the labour market opportunities to develop their experience and skills in a workplace setting and carry out valuable training at the same time. It is important to be mindful of particularly marginalised groups in this regard, including people recovering from addiction, Travellers and members of the Roma community.

The social inclusion and community activation programme, SICAP, is a €190 million five-year programme running from 2018 to 2022 that provides supports to help marginalised individuals and the groups that assist them. It has provided one-to-one support to over 70,000 individuals and assisted over 4,000 local community groups. This type of work will be more important than ever as we recover from the pandemic.

I am chairing the social inclusion roadmap steering group, which has been established to manage and oversee the successful implementation of the roadmap commitments. Members of the group include senior officials from each Department with responsibility for roadmap commitments, along with three representatives from the community and voluntary sector. The group first met on 11 November 2020 and the second meeting is scheduled for this day next week, 30 March.

At the first meeting, I highlighted the need for collaborative work between Departments to drive the delivery of commitments. I asked members to consider how Covid-19 has affected people who are experiencing deprivation and poverty. It is important that those who were vulnerable or struggling before the pandemic are not left behind once we are able to lift the pandemic restrictions and the economy begins to recover.

The roadmap ambition and the programme for Government ambition is to reduce the national consistent poverty rate in Ireland to 2% or less by 2025. This is perhaps the most significant commitment in the programme for Government. Since the recording of the rate of consistent poverty began, we have never reached a rate of less than 2%. It is fair to say that if we reach that rate of poverty, it will be lowest ever in the history of the State and before it. The current rate of consistent poverty in Ireland, based on 2019 figures, is 5.5%. This rate is higher for more vulnerable groups, such as children, lone parents and people with a disability. Over the next four years, we will need to reduce the national figure significantly to achieve the targets set out in the roadmap.

The 2020 Survey on Income and Living Conditions data will be published by the CSO towards the end of this year and will provide updated data on those experiencing poverty and exclusion during the period in which the pandemic and public health restrictions first impacted on our lives in 2020.

It is important to state the roadmap is not a static document. Many of the commitments are front-loaded, to be completed within the first half of the roadmap's lifetime. There is a review planned for 2022. I will be eager to conduct that as early as possible as the challenges and contexts have changed significantly since the roadmap's initial publication. We have a new programme for Government with very significant and new commitments related to social inclusion, such as the ending of direct provision and the introduction of a new regularisation scheme for undocumented migrants. Additional challenges have come to the fore in the last year in the context of the pandemic. The principles of just transition and climate justice need to be reflected in a plan for social inclusion. We have a new Department with a key role to play in the promotion of social inclusion. In this context, I am delighted that my colleague Deputy Harris, the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, has agreed to develop new commitments for inclusion in the roadmap. I acknowledge his commitment to social inclusion in his portfolio.

The roadmap includes a commitment on the production of an annual report on progress against each commitment. Work on the 2020 annual report is well under way and will be presented to this committee for discussion once it has been submitted to the Cabinet committee on social affairs and equality for consideration.

On 12 March, we passed a significant milestone, marking a full year since we entered lockdown as part of our efforts to deal with the spread of the Covid-19 virus across Ireland. During the past 12 months, we have seen the health impacts as infection rates have risen and fallen. The economic impacts have been severe, with large sectors of the economy closed for long periods, leading to a Covid-adjusted unemployment rate, which includes the 465,000 persons receiving the pandemic unemployment payment, PUP, of just under 25%. Many of those currently receiving the PUP will return to employment once the economy reopens. We will need to focus attention on providing employment supports to those whose jobs will not return, but also to those who were unemployed prior to the arrival of Covid.

In response to the economic impact of the pandemic and the associated public health restrictions implemented to curb the spread of the virus, the State launched a number of emergency income and business supports in March 2020 with the objective of providing a level of income certainty for those whose employment was affected by the crisis. To date, these critical supports, which include the PUP and the wage subsidy schemes, have resulted in cumulative expenditure of over €11 billion.

The positive effect of these interventions is reflected in an ESRI report published last year. It examined the impact of the Covid pandemic on unemployment in Ireland, estimating how family incomes had changed as a result of increased unemployment. It found that as a result of the initial Covid pandemic policy responses, household income fell by 3%, on average. This was in comparison with an estimated fall of 7% in the absence of these responses.

In addition to these measures, the State has put in place a comprehensive suite of business supports for Irish employers. This is important to refer to in today's context owing to the key role of employment in social inclusion. These measures include, among others, the Covid restrictions support scheme, the Covid-19 credit guarantee scheme, the Covid-19 working capital scheme, the apprenticeship incentivisation scheme, the commercial rates waiver and the warehousing of deferred tax debts. Combined, these supports continue to relieve some of the financial pressure weighing on Irish employers as they navigate the economic crisis.

All of this underscores the importance of the roadmap for social inclusion. While it was developed and approved before the pandemic, its ambition and focus remain relevant and continue to be a priority. The coming years will no doubt bring more challenges and difficult choices as the country, economy and society find their way through this pandemic and move out the other side. While we must, and should, focus on economic solutions, they have to be developed within the broader context so the most vulnerable within our society will not become more marginalised or be left behind.