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

I am sharing time. My Fine Gael colleague is not here at the moment.

Those are the people who the Department supports. Charities, social enterprises, community organisations and the volunteers who assist with these supports are an integral part of the fight against the pandemic. A key priority for me now and into the future will be the continued implementation of the community and voluntary sector strategy, Sustainable, Inclusive and Empowered Communities, which will be key to strengthening the community and voluntary sector which has shown its valuable contribution to all aspects of society throughout the pandemic.

As a result of the partnership approach adopted and the increased funding provided by the Department through the past three years to the community and voluntary sector, we were well placed to respond quickly and effectively to the challenges presented to our vulnerable and older citizens during Covid-19. For the past eight months, community and voluntary organisations, charities and social enterprises have played a significant role in delivering vital services to those most in need. I wish to mention some of the ways in which we, as a Department, were able to support them to do this.

First, there is volunteering. There is a fantastic record of volunteer work in Ireland and the Department has continued to invest in volunteering support infrastructure in recent years. This investment really paid dividends in our response efforts as volunteers have been very much to the forefront of the community response to the pandemic. In order to meet the significant extra demand on resources, my Department provided additional funding support to volunteer centres through Volunteer Ireland. Our investment in volunteering infrastructure continues. We are in the process of upgrading several volunteer information services to full volunteer centres which will be operational next year. The areas involved are Leitrim, Laois, Offaly, Roscommon, Waterford and Wexford.

Some 17,000 volunteers have registered with volunteer centres since the outbreak of Covid-19. Drawing on this significant response, a permanent volunteer reserve in each local authority area is under consideration, aimed at managing and co-ordinating our volunteer response in an impactful and targeted manner. I am pleased that after extensive stakeholder consultations, my Department has prepared a draft national strategy on volunteering which will shortly go to the Cabinet for consideration. This strategy will provide a roadmap for the way forward for volunteering and how the Government supports volunteering.

I wish to acknowledge the work of public participation networks, PPNs. They have played, and continue to play, a key role in the Community Call initiative. PPNs are working together with local authorities in carrying out initiatives on their own to help vulnerable people in their localities during the pandemic. The Department has overall responsibility for oversight and development of the national PPNs. PPNs are the main link between local authorities and the three pillars of the community and voluntary, social inclusion and environmental sectors in their areas. The Department will continue to support and develop PPNs in order that they can continue to facilitate participation and representation of communities on local decision-making bodies in a fair, equitable and transparent manner. The PPNs are launching their annual report tomorrow, which will include lists of the activities they undertook in 2019. I urge all Deputies to look up their local authority areas and see the level of activity that has been ongoing by the PPNs. Some 15,600 voluntary groups registered with the networks in 2019. They are the GAA of the community and voluntary sector, reaching into every community in the country. These figures are a great indicator of the vibrancy and energy of the community and voluntary sector in Ireland, especially at local level, and the role played by PPNs in local policymaking and networking.

Members will be pleased that the seniors alert scheme has continued to grow from strength to strength. There are now over 73,000 people availing of a personal monitored alarm, enabling them to live securely in their homes with confidence, independence and peace of mind. The seniors alert scheme is a great example of how we used an existing scheme in a proactive and innovative way. We reached out to all participants in the scheme through the monitoring services for their personal alarms to see if they were all right and if they needed any supports or help, and to arrange for additional supports to be provided through a partnership with ALONE.

I wish to flag that the Department is drafting a Bill to amend the Charities Act 2009. This legislation is designed to strengthen existing supports and to increase public confidence in the charities sector.

I will briefly discuss my social inclusion remit, which reaches into the Department of Social Protection in the area of inclusion. There has been enhanced co-operation between Departments regarding the social inclusion roadmap, which helps to provide a structure for the various social inclusion and poverty reduction approaches in each Department's strategy. I will press ahead with the implementation of this roadmap and do all in my power to help to bring about a more equal society. We plan to initiate some work in 2021 on tackling food poverty. I chaired the first meeting of the interdepartmental monitoring group on the social inclusion roadmap this day last week. All Departments attended and the engagement level was particularly encouraging.

I pay tribute to the social inclusion and community activation programme, SICAP, which is the Government's main social inclusion programme. During the pandemic we have had to be as flexible as possible to enable the local development companies, which are funded under this programme, to continue and strengthen their work with the most disadvantaged in society. In 2019, SICAP supported 2,636 community groups and 30,000 people. I acknowledge the work of all the local development companies in looking out for the most vulnerable during the pandemic. I am glad to announce that we will be piloting a set of new community development projects in 2021, with a view to growing the space and capacity for community-led development. It is hoped that some of these projects will have a climate action character based on the principles of social justice.

In terms of supporting social innovations through our social enterprise policy, our partnership with Rethink Ireland is key to addressing emerging social, economic and environmental needs in a sustainable manner. Rethink Ireland, formerly known as Social Innovation Fund Ireland, has overseen a fund of over €60 million in social innovation support, in combination with philanthropic donations on a matched-funding basis.

I wish to refer to the work of the community services programme, CSP. The Department currently supports more than 420 community organisations under the CSP to provide local services through a social enterprise model. In response to Covid-19, the Department put in place a €1.2 million CSP support fund for 2020 which provided additional funding to many of these organisations, ensuring that they could pay their full-time CSP-supported employees a maximum of €350 net per week, with a proportionate amount for part-time CSP-supported employees. To date, funding of approximately €1 million has issued to 365 CSP-supported organisations that are most in need, supporting over 1,400 full-time equivalent positions. Pobal, which manages the programme on behalf of the Department, has undertaken a detailed review of the financial position of all the CSP-supported organisations, as their ability to generate income has been greatly hampered by the pandemic. The outcome of this review will inform decisions regarding any additional supports that might be required by these organisations. The Department should be in a position to make an announcement on the matter in the coming days. In addition, the Department engaged Indecon Economic Consultants to carry out a review of the CSP. The report was published with a high-level action plan in September. The Department and Pobal have now commenced work on restructuring the programme, which is expected to be complete at the end of 2021.

I am delighted that the Department is a key partner in the PEACE programme and is currently co-designing, with Northern Ireland Departments and the Special EU Programmes Body, the new PEACE PLUS programme. It is expected to provide over €650 million to Northern Ireland and the Border counties. This funding is vital if we are to build strong, resilient communities in a post-Brexit environment and it offers great opportunities for the region.

I refer to the announcement last week of the 2021 action plan for the Dormant Accounts Fund. The fund's objective is to address economic, social or educational disadvantage and to support people with a disability. The 2021 action plan allocates funding of €51 million to 46 measures to be delivered across ten Departments, which indicates the need to ensure that tackling issues of social inclusion is a cross-departmental task. I will be examining ways to enhance the impact of the fund in 2021.

The Department will continue to work with our various community and voluntary sector partners to prioritise marginalised groups and those most impacted by Covid-19. We look forward to supporting new initiatives in 2021 that will ensure further community-led development at local level across the country. We also look forward to working co-operatively to tackle disadvantage and inequality.

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