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

As Minister of State with responsibility in three Departments, I will use my brief time to touch on some of the key budget 2024 measures in each of those Departments. Last year, with the outbreak of the Ukraine war, when Ukrainian families flowed into our communities throughout the country, the community and voluntary sector stood up to the plate. One of the key groups of organisations that reacted on the ground was the State's social inclusion and community activation programme, SICAP, implemented by local development companies throughout the country. Their response was extraordinary but they needed more boots on the ground and, therefore, we were last year given an additional allocation of €10 million to employ additional people in 2023. I am glad to say that allocation has been continued into 2024, along with the allocation of an additional €1 million for the volunteer centres, which are doing extraordinary work. In addition to that, the increase in the SICAP budget for this year is also notable in terms of the core spending with an increase of €4.6 million. There have been increased pressures from operating costs in SICAP programmes and I hope this will go a significant way towards addressing them.

Another significant increase in the budget allocation is the more than doubling of the funding in the ESF+ social innovation fund, from €1 million to €2.5 million. This increase will help lever multiples of this sum from the EU and help mentor and support social enterprises throughout Ireland. There is also a doubling of the VAT compensation scheme for charities, from €5 million to €10 million, which will greatly assist charities to reduce their VAT burden, thereby ensuring they will retain more funds for their invaluable work. I thank the Minister, Deputy Michael McGrath, for his support on this measure.

I want to take a moment to acknowledge the sad passing of Chuck Feeney this week, one of the most positively influential philanthropists and a prolific contributor to so many good causes in the community and voluntary sector in Ireland.

This is an opportune time to update the House that we are on target to have our first national philanthropy policy by the end of the year. We gained a small additional allocation in budget 2024 to help us implement this policy.

I will touch briefly on some relevant measures for which I have responsibility in the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth. I have responsibility for the national action plan against racism, and I am glad to say funding was secured for a new office of special rapporteur on racism in 2024. I have been having bilateral discussions with relevant Government Departments since the launch of the plan, but there needs to be consistent non-political oversight of the plan, and the new office will play a key role in this regard. We have another round of the Ireland Against Racism fund in 2024 to support the implementation of the plan, along with a national awareness raising campaign. The year 2024 will also see rollout of new iterations of a number of measures that will support the integration of new arrivals to Ireland at community and national level. We will have a communities integration fund next year, and I launched applications for the national integration fund recently. I will be launching the larger asylum, migration and integration fund in a few weeks. Both of these are multi-annual funds. In a couple of weeks we will also be launching a consultation process for a new national integration strategy.

I will briefly touch on some measures within the Department of Social Protection. I chair the working group on food poverty and I want to highlight the role of the school meals programme in tackling food poverty for children, in particular the hot school meals programme. This will undergo further unprecedented growth in 2024 following the allocation of an additional €40 million in yesterday's budget. I acknowledge the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, and her passion and push on this growth. I welcome the Taoiseach's focus on child poverty and especially the measures in yesterday's budget on the increase for qualified child and working family payment. I have been advocating for this and the research I have commissioned tells us they are the most effective payments in reducing poverty rates overall in society.

I will point to a number of other measures championed by my colleagues in Government, in particular the continued reduction in public transport fares and expansion of the youth card to 24-year-olds and 25-year-olds by the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan. I note the extraordinary additional 25% reduction in childcare fees by the Minster for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, Deputy O'Gorman. I also acknowledge a huge achievement, which is the introduction of the new infrastructure, climate and nature fund, which will protect our biodiversity and climate targets going forward.

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