Ms Colette Bennett:

I want to echo Ms O’Brien’s point on social enterprise. We are conscious of the shifts that have been taking place in recent years in the social enterprise sector. Once, it was a support and assurance that there would be this deficit demand and community organisations would spot the deficit within their own communities and would address it through the likes of family resource centres, cafés or whatever it needed to be. We have moved into a green area, for example, in Ballymun and there is a whole kind of circular economy social enterprise there as well. They provide not just employment but also important services within the communities they serve.

In the past while, we have seen a shift to where it is viable social enterprises once they can stand on their own two feed within a certain amount of time. That viability is determined by the qualifications of the managerial staff and how many staff who start within that social enterprise or community service’s programme will move on to something else. That has not traditionally been and nor should it be the purpose of a social enterprise; the purpose of having a programme for communities, developed by communities. For many people who work in those areas, that is their job; it is what they want and what they like doing. The pressure to move on or be deemed not viable is a shift in policy in that area. I know there have been some moves in segregating out the different types of social enterprise but bringing other more community programme aspects within that whole catch-all is potentially damaging. It is potentially undermining what the community is looking for and trying to do while it is essentially competing for resources against much higher net worth or net value social enterprises in the same space.