Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. Having just transferred from the Department of enterprise, I understand the rationale for his question. The Department of Rural and Community Development has had policy responsibility for social enterprise since the Department was established in 2017. Trading for Impact: National Social Enterprise Policy 2024-2027 was launched in July 2024. This policy was the successor to the first national social enterprise policy, which was published in 2019.

The development of Trading for Impact was carried out in partnership with the social enterprise sector to which the Deputy referred. A series of bilateral meetings were held with key stakeholders, including Departments and sectoral representative bodies and networks, which included the local development companies, and the Local Development Companies Network, LDCN, formerly known as the ILDN. There were a number of regional stakeholder events. Finally, a public consultation took place and 43 submissions were received from stakeholders.

In addition, my Department commissioned two major pieces of research to underpin the development of Trading for Impact. The first was a baseline data collation exercise on the scale and scope of social enterprise in Ireland and the second was an OECD in-depth policy review of the social enterprise and entrepreneurship ecosystem in Ireland.

Trading for Impact details 57 policy actions under five key objectives. Implementation is to be informed by a stakeholder engagement group made up of key stakeholders. The membership of this group will be announced shortly. It is an area I will be very interested in working in, alongside the Minister of State, Deputy Buttimer. I had many meetings with the CEO of Social Enterprise Republic of Ireland, Mr. John Logue during my time at the Department of enterprise. There is massive potential here. We also need to support existing social enterprises.

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