Christopher O'Sullivan (Cork South West, Fianna Fail)
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9. To ask the Minister for Rural and Community Development the steps that her Department is taking to address poverty and social exclusion across Ireland. [62730/22]

Aindrias Moynihan (Cork North West, Fianna Fail)
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13. To ask the Minister for Rural and Community Development the measures that her Department is taking to address poverty and social exclusion in rural Ireland. [62468/22]

Aindrias Moynihan (Cork North West, Fianna Fail)
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Across north-west Cork, a range of vital community groups and initiatives provide wonderful support to many communities. They are people who would otherwise find themselves socially excluded. These groups include IRD Duhallow, Westgate Foundation, Macroom Senior Citizens, and Coiste Tithíochta Uíbh Laoghaire Teo, to name but a few. They help to tackle social inclusion and poverty locally. This winter, they will face higher operating costs, elevated fuel costs, increased electricity bills and so on. They need to be supported to help social inclusion in the area.

Joe O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Green Party)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 9 and 13 together.

My Department's mission is to promote rural and community development and to support vibrant, inclusive and sustainable communities throughout Ireland. My Department's social inclusion and community activation programme, SICAP, is our country's primary social inclusion programme. The current programme began on 1 January 2018 and will run until the end of 2023. The programme provides funding to tackle poverty and social exclusion at a local level through local engagement and partnerships between disadvantaged individuals, community organisations and public sector agencies. SICAP is managed at a local level by 33 local community development committees with support from local authorities. It is implemented nationally by 46 local development companies. I was delighted to secure an increase of €1.3 million under budget 2023, increasing the annual funding to €44.3 million. Additionally, €10 million is being provided under SICAP from budget 2023 to allow local development companies to continue to support arrivals from Ukraine.

My Department also funds a range of other programmes that target those most in need, including the empowering communities programme, the community development pilot programme and the place-based leadership programme, all of which seek to address the toughest challenges experienced in disadvantaged areas. Another measure in this vein is the new funding rate allocation model for the community services programme, CSP, currently being introduced. CSP organisations that are operating in areas of high disadvantage, employing individuals from the prescribed programme target groups, will benefit from the higher funding rate category.

A range of other programmes in my Department focus on social exclusion. We support the public participation networks, PPNs, nationally. One of the three pillars under that is the social inclusion pillar. My other Department has a roadmap for social inclusion too. I will not talk too much about that. The main aim of that is to have increased incomes and improved public services. We have the senior alert scheme. A number of organisations under the scheme to support national organisations in the voluntary sector, SSNO, work in the area too. Under the Dormant Accounts Fund, which we published last month, €54 million was granted to 44 projects across all Departments in that area. I note the Deputy's core question is on the slightly different matter of energy costs, which I will pick up on in the supplementary answer.

Aindrias Moynihan (Cork North West, Fianna Fail)
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Organisations such as Coiste Tithíochta Uíbh Laoghaire Teo, Macroom Senior Citizens and Westgate Foundation deliver meals on wheels and provide vital support in many communities. They recently outlined how they feel they will end up having to withdraw many supports because they will run out of funding later next year. They are facing higher operating, energy and fuel costs, and many more costs. I acknowledge the community support fund and the social inclusion and community activation programme, as well as the new community and voluntary energy support scheme. They are welcome. However, there are gaps. Some community groups are slipping through those gaps. A building might be owned by an education and training board. There might be a number of other reasons. Funding is being released in a number of tranches for these schemes. Will groups that have not got funding be carried forward? Will the Minister of State modify the scheme so that groups which have been disqualified or are unable to get funding will be eligible for it in later rounds and be supported in that way? I understand that not all applications to the community and voluntary energy support scheme were granted. The social inclusion and community activation programme funding was allocated as part of budget 2023, so it will not become available until later next year. Is there a way to advance that into the early part of the year? Many of these groups will have, and have already, suffered from those inflated energy costs.

Joe O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Green Party)
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There are many strands to the Deputy's question and many different funding schemes. I will try my best in the time I have to assure the Deputy that we have constructed two different models in our Department to try to capture everyone with regard to energy costs. The Deputy mentioned the community and voluntary energy support scheme. We have reopened that as of Tuesday and tweaked it because there were groups that we were not catching. The Deputy might check in on the eligibility for that. There were some organisations that had a large number of community halls. For example, a Catholic diocese might have had 70 or 80 halls in an area. The system was not set up adequately to capture all of them in an efficient way so we tweaked that. It has been reopened until 20 January. There are other groups which we are keeping an eye on. We want to hear who is falling between the cracks. The support scheme that is being run through the local community development committees is aimed at capturing smaller groups which may not have legal status but which do good work and pay bills.

Depending on the programme and organisation, another Government Department might have the most relevant energy support scheme. I keep thinking of IRD Duhallow. It is the engine in Deputy Moynihan's area when it comes to much of the social inclusion work and I commend it. While I mentioned the increased SICAP allocation for 2023, the allocation for this year was 10%, which is the largest increase in allocation that SICAP has ever got. I secured it in last year's budget. I would like to hear if there are funding issues with SICAP. It should be adequately funded for this year. There are issues in using up some of the allocation for this year in other areas. If the Deputy can give me detail on who is falling through the cracks, we would like to hear it because we want to make sure that we capture everyone who is dealing with increased costs.

Aindrias Moynihan (Cork North West, Fianna Fail)
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Tá líon mór grúpaí pobail áitiúla, lena n-áirítear coiste tithíochta i gCléire, coiste tithíochta an oileán agus go leor eile, ag freastal ar phobail inár ndúiche. Is pobail iad sin atá thíos leis. Tá na grúpaí seo ag cur an dinnéar, córas iompair agus go leor eile ar fáil. Tá sé fíorthábhachtach go mbeadh gach foinse maoinithe a bhféadfadh tacaíocht a thabhairt do na grúpaí sin ar fáil dóibh agus nach mbeidís fágtha ar lár.

It is vital that those different community groups can be funded. I acknowledge that the Minister of State is taking lessons from that earlier round and possibly making improvements on the more recent ones. I asked about SICAP under budget 2023, which would not be expected to be spent for some months yet. Can that be advanced so it is ready to release to groups at the earliest possible time? In many areas, they are already suffering from those higher costs.

Joe O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Green Party)
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I can certainly look into how soon it can be released but it will be in 2023. I would be interested to hear where the issues were with SICAP allocation because there was a large increase last year. The safety net for many smaller groups will be through the allocation that we are giving to local authorities, which they will disburse through their local community development committees. We have allocated €362,000 to Cork County Council. I am not sure what stage the county council is at in opening that. It should be soon if it is not open already. People should be able to submit applications to that. I ask the Deputy to let us know if anyone has fallen through the cracks. The community and voluntary energy support scheme is something we had not done before. We did not know who or how many would apply for it. We were open to tweaking it and have done so. We thought we were catching everyone but I ask the Deputy to let me know if someone has fallen through the cracks.