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

I want to confirm this evening that under the increased allocation to the community development programme of my Department, I will be in a position to improve a key funding mechanism for the community and voluntary sector in Ireland. A scheme to support national organisations is one of the main multi-annual funding mechanisms that Government uses to support the community and voluntary sector. A new and improved iteration of the scheme will begin next year and we hope to open applications before the end of this year.

In every Dáil constituency, the Government funds local development companies to implement the social inclusion and community activation programme, SICAP. In practice, this is manifested on the ground as local responses to food poverty; personal calls to isolated older people; supports and grants to grassroots groups to respond to local leads, especially among disadvantaged groups; helping to provide English language support; bridging the digital divide; facilitation of lifelong learning; and mental health support, all done in collaboration with local State and non-governmental organisation providers.

Many of the issues faced by marginalised groups were highlighted during the pandemic. We need more feet on the ground to work on those issues at a community level. That is why I was particularly glad to secure funding for an estimated additional 60 community-based social inclusion workers for SICAP as part of budget 2022. These workers will assist in the very practical, localised process of making sure that our social recovery from Covid is an inclusive one.

I will also briefly reference the fact that budget 2022 has brought significant advancements to the commitments to the roadmap for social inclusion, which I oversee in the Department of Social Protection. Those include the commitments to continue to target a reduction in poverty among children and families on low incomes, the further expansion of the hot school meals programme, the extension of free GP care to six-year-olds and seven-year-olds, and income disregard measures to make work viable for lone parents, along with other budgetary measures to improve our rate of employment for people with disabilities.

I am glad to say that I will be reviewing the roadmap next year to reflect the increased ambition of this Government in tackling social exclusion.

See this speech in context