Cormac Devlin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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133. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection if he will report on his Department’s annual social inclusion forum; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [32904/25]

Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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The Social Inclusion Forum was held on 8^th May 2025. The Forum brings together government officials, people experiencing poverty and social exclusion, and the community and voluntary sector groups representing them, to discuss and debate national policy on poverty reduction and social inclusion. The Forum was arranged by the Department of Social Protection with the European Anti-Poverty Network Ireland (EAPN) and Community Work Ireland (CWI) as event partners.

The Social Inclusion Forum is an important event in the calendar of the Department of Social Protection. The Social Inclusion Forum this year was the twentieth social inclusion forum. It provides a valuable opportunity for persons experiencing poverty and social exclusion to share their lived experiences with policymakers from the Department of Social Protection and other government departments.

The theme for this year's Social Inclusion Forum was looking towards the Government’s new Roadmap for Social Inclusion, which is the national strategy to reduce poverty and improve social inclusion. The Roadmap for Social Inclusion builds on the work of its predecessors with the aim of reducing the number of people in consistent poverty in Ireland and increasing social inclusion for those who are most disadvantaged. This is reflected in its ambition to “Reduce consistent poverty to 2% or less and to make Ireland one of the most socially inclusive countries in the EU”.

The Roadmap for Social Inclusion is an overarching statement of Government strategy, which acknowledges the range of sectoral plans already in place that have social inclusion as a core objective, in areas such as education, health, children and childcare, community development and housing. These plans remain key to ensuring that social inclusion is at the core of public policy and service strategy across all government departments and services.

A consultation for a successor strategy was launched in April and runs until 30^th June. Discussions at the Forum fed into the consultation for the Roadmap, which involved stakeholder engagement on the day.

The Department will prepare and publish a conference report, which will encapsulate the breadth of the discussions and contributions throughout the day. This will be published in the coming weeks on the Department’s website.

I look forward to discussing feedback from the Forum with my Government colleagues.