Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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Social enterprises are businesses that work primarily to improve the lives of people. Their core objective is to achieve a social, societal, or environmental impact. Like any other business, they pursue their objectives by trading in goods and services on an ongoing basis. However, surpluses generated are re-invested into achieving their core social objectives.

My Department has responsibility for implementation of the National Social Enterprise policy for Ireland 2019-2022, which is helping to create an enabling environment for social enterprise to grow in scale and impact, and contribute to social and economic progress. The Policy is focused on three main objectives; 1. Building Awareness of Social Enterprise; 2. Growing and Strengthening Social Enterprise; and 3. Achieving Better Policy Alignment.

Under Objective 2 (Growing and Strengthening Social Enterprise) my Department continues to support social enterprises in a number of different ways including through the annual €2.3m Dormant Accounts funded Social Enterprise Measure.

Last year the measure supported 247 social enterprises through the €1m Social Enterprise Capital Grants Scheme, and the €680k Awareness Raising Initiative for Social Enterprise (ARISE) which supported 50 projects. I also provided €400k funding for a pilot Start-up Scheme for Social Enterprise which supported 25 early stage social enterprises, and €160k funding to the Covid-19 Social Enterprise Regeneration Programme, which is providing training and mentoring in strategic planning and income diversification. These supports are designed to complement other mainstream business supports.

My Department also provides significant supports to social enterprise through a number of other programmes including the Community Services Programme (CSP), Social Inclusion Community Activation Programme (SICAP) and LEADER. Social Enterprises had full access to the Innovate Together Fund and the COVID-19 Stability Fund, which were also available to the wider community and voluntary sector.

Apart from funding, my Department also supports the development of social enterprises in other important ways such as providing training and mentoring in procurement, increasing awareness of social enterprise, cross Government and international engagement, supporting higher level research and providing guidance into issues such as legal forms for social enterprise.