Joe O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Green Party)
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The Department's Community Services Programme (CSP) supports over 420 community organisations to provide employment opportunities and the delivery of local services through a social enterprise model.

Qualifying organisations must be social enterprises capable of generating income from their activities in order to meet the full salary costs of the supported posts, for example, from income received from the public use of facilities and services.

As part of the restructuring process, a new funding rate allocation model for the CSP programme has been introduced, as an alternative to the previous flat rate payment model. CSP organisations that are operating in areas of high disadvantage, employing individuals from the prescribed programme target groups and having limited earning potential will now benefit from the higher funding rate category.

The programme is currently closed to new applications. However, it is anticipated that the Programme will open calls to address identified gaps in service delivery in the coming weeks.