Jim O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay South, Fianna Fail)
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687. To ask the Minister for Rural and Community Development the main policy achievements of her Department since 27 June 2020; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [61656/22]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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Since the formation of this Government my Department has continued to play a critical role in supporting communities across the country in both rural and urban Ireland. My Department’s continuing focus is to promote rural and community development and to support vibrant, inclusive and sustainable communities throughout Ireland. This mission is set out in our Statement of Strategy 2021 to 2023.

My Department has made substantial progress since 2020 in delivering programmes and policy interventions efficiently and effectively for rural Ireland and communities, and has ensured that our existing supports and funding is directed to best support communities, particularly in respect of the emerging challenges of Brexit, Climate Action and Covid-19.

Our Rural Future, published last year, is the Irish Government’s blueprint for a post-COVID-19 recovery and development of rural Ireland over the period 2020 - 2025. It provides the framework to achieve the vision of transforming the quality of life and opportunity for people living in rural areas. Since publication, implementation of measures continues to be strong. Progress updates are published every six months and a work programme for the following year produced, enabling new actions to be added over the lifetime of the policy.

Sustainable, Inclusive and Empowered Communities: A five-year strategy to support the community and voluntary sector in Ireland, published in August 2019, sets out how Government will support the sector in the years to come and aims to provide communities with both the means and opportunity to be involved in decisions that affect them. With actions to be implemented to 2024, the Strategy sets a general direction of travel for government policy in relation to the community development, local development and the community and voluntary sectors for the years ahead. I will continue to work with stakeholders and cross-Government colleagues in the implementation of the strategy.

Ireland’s first National Social Enterprise Policy, published in July 2019, focuses on building awareness of Social Enterprise, growing and strengthening Social Enterprise, and achieving better policy alignment. Implementation of measures contained in the policy is ongoing and the 4th National Social Enterprise Conference took place last month. The theme of the conference was “A New Beginning”. The Conference brought together a wide range of national and international speakers representing the full spectrum of social enterprise activity in Ireland.

Our Public Libraries 2022: Inspiring, Connecting and Empowering Communities is an ambitious strategy to develop the public library service over the period 2018 - 2022. The strategy was developed by my Department, the County and City Management Association and the Local Government Management Agency. Building on technological and service innovations of recent years, it focuses on improving access, use and visibility of the public library and establishing it as the go-to place for a range of sustainable, integrated public services.

The Town Centre First policy was launched in February 2022. It was developed jointly by my Department and the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. It contains a range of actions designed to achieve key objectives such as social and economic revival in towns, the provision of housing, as well as addressing challenges like vacancy and derelict buildings.

The National Hub Network and its online platform, connectedhubs.ie, was launched in May 2021. This project began as a small regional project in the west of Ireland and was scaled up rapidly during the public health crisis to meet an explosion in demand for remote working facilities. There are currently 298 hubs on-boarded to the platform and more than 10,000 registered customers. Our rural Future commits to 400 hubs on the platform by 2025, a target I am confident will be met, if not exceeded.

Other achievements include the National Volunteering Strategy 2021 – 2025 which sets out a long-term vision for volunteering and volunteers with series of implementation actions underway. Embracing Ireland’s Outdoors, Ireland’s first ever National Outdoor Recreation Strategy, was launched last month. It will set the stage to strengthen and support the sustainable development of the outdoor recreation sector in Ireland for years to come bringing huge economic and health benefits to communities across the country.

Work is also continuing on the development of the new Islands Policy as set out in the Programme for Government and a draft Irish National Policy on Philanthropy will be published next year for public consultation.