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

I take this opportunity today to emphasise the importance of community work in all its various forms across the country. We invest in built infrastructure and in public services but infrastructure and public services do not, in and of themselves, create communities. The glue that pulls it all together is very often our community organisations and workers and, invariably, our volunteers.

We do not always give this reality due recognition. The pandemic, the invasion of Ukraine and the cost-of-living crisis have underlined how important community is and how important it is for us to invest in community supports.

Over the past four years, I have ensured that significant supports have been provided to community and voluntary organisations to help them weather the storms of Covid-19 and the cost-of-living crisis. One of the first challenges I faced as Minister of State was the funding deficit of community groups funded under the community services programme, CSP. Many were at risk of closure at the time due to Covid-19 but I secured funding to ensure their survival.

Building on that, I reviewed the community services programme, restructured it and introduced a new funding model which has provided additional funds to those organisations working in areas of highest need. Yesterday, I was glad to confirm that I have secured an additional €3 million for the CSP in 2025. Over the budgets of this Government, I have increased the funding to the CSP by 17%.

There is no community programme that has such a wide reach and has more contact with people most in need on a daily basis than the social inclusion and community activation programme, SICAP. It has been my mission, not just to strengthen and grow SICAP, but to grow awareness and appreciation of the programme at the highest levels in government and in Departments. I have grown the budget for SICAP by 36% over my time in office and yesterday I was happy to announce a further increase for the programme for 2025.

I want to mention our volunteer centres. During my time in Government I have launched our first national volunteering policy and I have heavily invested in our volunteering infrastructure to ensure that we have a volunteer centre in every county in Ireland. Including yesterday's budget increase, I have grown the overall volunteer centre budget allocation by 44%.

Our investment in volunteer centres is some of the best value for money we can get. Volunteer centres encourage and support volunteering locally by supporting and guiding individuals who wish to give their time freely but they also engage hugely with local groups and match up available skills with need.

Speaking of volunteers, I want to acknowledge our public participation networks, PPNs. This is an extraordinary network of over 17,000 groups nationally. Every local authority area has its own independent PPN funded by my Department and the local PPN is absolutely key in local policy formulation and in facilitating participation and representation of communities at a local level.

The PPNs are a relatively new structure and I am glad to say that during my time as Minister of State I have conducted a review of the PPNs and, in collaboration with the network, we have recently completed an implementation plan coming out of that review. The national network of PPNs is growing. We have a new path forward so I was especially glad to announce a significant increase of 15% yesterday on last year's budget allocation, leading to an increase of 36% since budget 2020.

I have also had the opportunity to develop new community-based programmes. I have introduced a new community development programme that goes back to the core principles of bottom-up community-led development and I saw the amazing and impactful outcomes of that programme at an event in Athlone only last week.

Earlier this year, I established a new community connection project. This project will fund 30 new community workers across the country who will have a particular role in addressing community division and misinformation on people seeking protection. It will run in parallel with a research project that will gather localised best practice in preventing and addressing division and tackling misinformation. It will work in collaboration with the community engagement team I have established in the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth.

Before I finish I want to mention what I think will be an increasingly important programme going forward, beyond this Government. In 2022 I launched the empowering communities programme. Based on the Pobal HP Deprivation Index, I selected 14 of the most disadvantaged communities in the country and put community workers on the ground in these areas. The geographical areas selected are relatively small with a view to facilitating intensive community work in those areas that need it most. Since then, I have been able to expand the programme to three other locations and yesterday I was delighted to announce a €1 million expansion of the programme. I place particular emphasis on this programme because despite progress in many areas in Ireland, there are still areas around the country in towns and cities and rural areas which continue to be left behind. I believe the empowering communities programme will be central going forward to significantly increase social inclusion and social cohesion nationally.

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