Jerry Buttimer (Cork South-Central, Fine Gael)

I thank the Deputy for this very important question. He is right that the work of men's sheds has been tremendous. Every community has benefited and equally women's sheds are emerging. The emergence of women’s sheds has been a very positive development for communities across Ireland. They provide a safe, comfortable and inclusive environment where women of all ages can share skills, work on meaningful projects and connect with their communities.

The Minister, Deputy Calleary, and I are committed to providing any support we can for the development of a national governing body for women’s sheds to ensure that individual women’s sheds can benefit from having a strong national representative body to advocate on their behalf. I am pleased that our colleague in the Department of Health, the Minister of State, Deputy Jennifer Murnane O'Connor, shares our view.

A number of meetings have taken place between representatives of women's sheds and officials from our Department and from the Department of Health. Both Departments have jointly funded the provision of a facilitator to assist the representatives of the women’s sheds in their discussions on the formation of a national body. The facilitator is also providing advice to the representatives from the women’s sheds in the context of appropriate governance structures. Several meetings have taken place, both online and in person, and further meetings will be scheduled in the coming weeks.

The women’s sheds representatives and the facilitator are working together to outline a work plan to determine what the next steps should be. Officials in our Department along with their counterparts in the Department of Health hold regular update meetings with the facilitator to discuss progress, the most recent of which took place last week.

Discussions on the work plan are ongoing and it is expected that these discussions will continue into the new year, given the Christmas break and the sensitivities of the matter being discussed. Once the work plan has been completed our Department will review its recommendations and we will continue to engage with the women's sheds representatives to determine the most appropriate support for its implementation.

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