Joe O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Green Party)
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My department's Community Services Programme (CSP) currently supports over 420 community-based organisations, to provide local services through a social enterprise model. CSP provides an annual co-funding contribution towards each full-time equivalent (FTE) position being supported, and, where warranted, towards the cost of employing a manager.

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.

A new call for applications under the CSP was launched on 6^thMarch last. Two pre-application support workshops were provided to potential applicants to ensure organisations were fully equipped with the information that they needed to apply for this funding.

Following the pre-application support workshops, organisations were invited to submit a short concept note to Pobal outlining their proposal for assessment against the objectives of the call.

All of the concept notes received have been reviewed by Pobal, who manage and administer the programme on behalf of the Department, and are currently under review with the department. Pobal have confirmed that they received a concept note from the organisation in question.

Following the review process, successful organisations will be invited to participate in the formal application process. It is expected that organisations will receive notification of the outcome in July.