Joe O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Green Party)
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The Roadmap for Social Inclusion 2020-2025 is a whole of Government strategy with the ambitious aim to reduce consistent poverty to 2 per cent or less and to make Ireland one of the most socially inclusive member states in the EU. The Roadmap was published in January 2020 and contains seven high level goals, delivered by 81 unique commitments (originally 69 commitments).

Implementation of Roadmap commitments is well underway with many commitments either fully achieved or close to completion and work ongoing in relation to the remainder. At the end of 2023, 45 Roadmap commitments were either fully achieved or achieved with ongoing delivery, with delivery on the remaining 36 commitments in progress.

The first and second Progress Reports on the implementation of Roadmap commitments are available on gov.ie, covering the progress made over the period January 2020 to June 2022. These are accompanied by Report Cards detailing progress on each Roadmap commitment. The third Progress Report and Report Card, covering the period of July 2022 to June 2023, will be published later this month.

The Roadmap committed to undertaking an independent mid-term review in 2022. This focused on:

• a review of progress in the implementation of commitments;
• an assessment of the existing Roadmap ambition, goals and commitments; and
• a review of the existing Roadmap indicators.

This resulted in updates to the targets and commitments, set in 2020, due to the changing environment and priorities since publication. These include the addition of 12 new commitments and the revision of 17 existing commitments. The Mid-term Review Report of the Roadmap was published at the Social Inclusion Forum in June 2023.

The Social Inclusion Roadmap Steering Group, which I chair, oversees progress on implementation of Roadmap commitments. It comprises senior representatives of responsible Departments and three external members from the Community and Voluntary Sector.

The Government is fully committed to the implementation of the Roadmap. I will continue to drive delivery of the remaining commitments to ensure that no-one is left behind in the ongoing implementation of this vital national strategy.