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

I propose to take Questions Nos. 9 and 13 together.

My Department's mission is to promote rural and community development and to support vibrant, inclusive and sustainable communities throughout Ireland. My Department's social inclusion and community activation programme, SICAP, is our country's primary social inclusion programme. The current programme began on 1 January 2018 and will run until the end of 2023. The programme provides funding to tackle poverty and social exclusion at a local level through local engagement and partnerships between disadvantaged individuals, community organisations and public sector agencies. SICAP is managed at a local level by 33 local community development committees with support from local authorities. It is implemented nationally by 46 local development companies. I was delighted to secure an increase of €1.3 million under budget 2023, increasing the annual funding to €44.3 million. Additionally, €10 million is being provided under SICAP from budget 2023 to allow local development companies to continue to support arrivals from Ukraine.

My Department also funds a range of other programmes that target those most in need, including the empowering communities programme, the community development pilot programme and the place-based leadership programme, all of which seek to address the toughest challenges experienced in disadvantaged areas. Another measure in this vein is the new funding rate allocation model for the community services programme, CSP, currently being introduced. CSP organisations that are operating in areas of high disadvantage, employing individuals from the prescribed programme target groups, will benefit from the higher funding rate category.

A range of other programmes in my Department focus on social exclusion. We support the public participation networks, PPNs, nationally. One of the three pillars under that is the social inclusion pillar. My other Department has a roadmap for social inclusion too. I will not talk too much about that. The main aim of that is to have increased incomes and improved public services. We have the senior alert scheme. A number of organisations under the scheme to support national organisations in the voluntary sector, SSNO, work in the area too. Under the Dormant Accounts Fund, which we published last month, €54 million was granted to 44 projects across all Departments in that area. I note the Deputy's core question is on the slightly different matter of energy costs, which I will pick up on in the supplementary answer.

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