Joe Neville (Kildare North, Fine Gael)

Today, I want to talk about something that I firmly believe in and have worked in. I have seen the effort involved in our own communities. The Minister of State has been leading on this since taking up his position in recent months. I have met him a number of times in north Kildare and know that he has been all around the country because he believes in what he is doing. He believes in the importance of social enterprises and in this Trading for Impact project. I met him in Clane and he will be coming to Lullymore soon in the context of working with social enterprises. I have been involved in social enterprises myself that came in different guises. We have spoken here about community centres and cafés. I have been involved in my local community centre in Leixlip and have seen the benefit of it. I was chairman for a number of years. The centre was started in the community 40 years ago and now has a number of employees. It has provided some people with work opportunities that they may not have otherwise had. Others gained work experience there and moved on to career paths. That is what is enabled in community centres around the country.

Specific groups like the Clane Project Centre have delivered something way beyond their initial capability through fundraising initially, followed by good investment decisions. They have been able to give to their community in a number of different ways. They have helped other local groups by taking them under their umbrella. Groups like the Clane Men's Shed, whose members met the Minister of State, have been able to utilise the vision, wisdom and effort of the people who started the Clane Project Centre a number of years ago. McAuley Place in Naas is another good example. It has looked after the elderly and other vulnerable groups who need care. Another example is the Mill in Celbridge, which provides a forum for various groups, including sports clubs and community groups, to utilise its facilities.

I recognise the difficulty of what we are trying to do as well as how difficult it can be to grasp what we are trying to do. In essence, most of these groups come from the ground up but we are trying to put a policy in place from the top down, from the Government. We are trying to encapsulate and direct what people do on the ground, in the community. Ultimately, that will be very hard, if not impossible, to deliver. What the Minister of State is trying to do with this policy is to put guidelines in place for people. That will bring its own complications because not every group has the skill sets required, whether that is in relation to financial support, financial knowledge, fundraising ability or how to deal with children in the case of a youth club, for example. All of those things require very specific skill sets and we need to ensure, through this policy document, that local groups know what to refer to or where to go to ensure they are going in the right direction. Ultimately, what we are dealing with is ordinary people in their communities who see a gap, who see that something needs to be put in place and who go out to fix it. They are not going to have all of the solutions and that is where the Government has to come in. That is what the Minister of State is attempting to do with this policy document. By learning from others, we can help new people to get involved.

On Monday, I was lucky to go to Kildare town to meet members of the Kildare LEADER partnership, including Tara Lane and Rioana Mulligan. They were setting things up for lots of other groups to learn about where they could potentially avail of funding. The LEADER group in Kildare has been very innovative in terms of how it deals with social enterprises. The Minister of State will going to Lullymore soon to speak with members of the Kildare LEADER group.

I grew up in an urban area but I know that social enterprises can fit in especially well in rural areas, where services and businesses might not be operating to the scale they could be. We see people in these areas getting fully behind the enterprise. In a growing region like north Kildare, we do not necessarily have all of the facilities we need. We have housing but we do not necessarily have all of the other facilities that we need. Social enterprises can be tailored and can provide community solutions that larger organisations or the Government cannot get involved with initially. The Trading for Impact policy is about unlocking the full potential of social enterprise. This is not about charity. It is about supporting those groups, funding those groups and ensuring that the people involved can be drivers of sustainable jobs, inclusion and innovation in their communities. Ultimately, without those people and without some policy direction, communities will be left behind. We must also be conscious of the fact that not every community or sector will have those people - they just might not be there - and that is when we must ensure that we look for and fill the gaps in different areas using a more top-down approach, when effort is not coming from the ground up. We need to ensure that social enterprises provide employment for people. I have seen the benefit of this for people who are long-term unemployed or for migrants who are new to an area and want get involved in the locality. Social enterprises can be key in that regard.

I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak on this. I welcome the work done on it and the Minister of State's effort. I can see the hands-on approach to what he is doing. I thank him for his time in listening to the points I have made. I know he will continue to engage with me on areas of north Kildare, and indeed, if there is any way I can assist him on the national policy, I would be more than willing to do so too. I thank him for his time today.

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