Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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2002. To ask the Minister for Rural and Community Development the estimated cost of establishing a training fund of €100 per staff member for all community, rural development projects and charity sector employees. [28955/22]

Joe O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Green Party)
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In 2019, the Department of Rural and Community Development published Sustainable, Inclusive and Empowered Communities. This strategy describes a long-term vision for our communities and sets a general direction of travel for government policy in relation to supporting communities and the community and voluntary sector.

Specifically, the strategy commits to support community groups and organisations to identify and meet their training needs, and to implement a formal programme of training to meet these needs and support capacity in groups and organisations.

In order to deliver on this commitment, a research project into the training needs of the sector is currently underway. Three separate reports will examine

- The training needs of Local Community Development Committees (LCDCs);

- An assessment of the skills gaps of voluntary boards of mid-sized organisations;

- An assessment of skills gaps across smaller community & voluntary groups.

The findings and recommendations arising from these research reports will inform decisions in my Department and across Government on how best to support the training and development needs of the sector.

In the meantime, training for the sector is being addressed in a number of other ways across my Department and across Government, including significant funding from the National Training Fund, administered by the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science.

The number of persons employed in the community, rural development projects and charity sector is not readily quantifiable. However, the strategy itself, using data from the Charities Regulator’s Registered Irish Charities Social and Economic Impact Report2018, confirms that charities support some 290,000 employees. Using this figure as a guide, a training fund of €100 per employee would cost in the region of €29,000,000. It should be noted however, that not all organisations working in the sector operate as charities registered with the Charities Regulator, therefore the figure provided is a conservative estimate.