I thank the Deputies for an engaging discussion on the important issue of the cost of living. As already outlined by my colleague, the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, the fundamental objective of Government policy in this issue is to take action to support our citizens, monitor the impact of those actions, listen to the suggestions from this House and respond appropriately at the right time. I want to address a couple of specific aspects of the motion, including how whole-of-government action is responding to combat fo…

I thank the Deputy for the question. The 1,640 supervisors and assistant supervisors provide a very important role running over 840 community employment, CE, and other schemes countrywide. As the Deputy knows, these schemes deliver important locally-based community services, while providing a valuable training and development opportunity to the long-term unemployed and to those furthest removed from the labour market. CE supervisors and assistant supervisors are employees of the individual CE schemes, which are fun…

Yes, is the short answer. We were eager, when we were going through a process like this and when there are schemes with quite strong similarities that are all couched under the employment support schemes I oversee, that they would be looked at in the whole and that would be important. We are eager to look at CE, Tús, RSS and the job initiative, JI, supervisors in this process.

I thank both Deputies and agree with their sentiments on the valuable nature of all the supervisors across all of the schemes and the work they do. I am hopeful that an agreed and fair resolution can be reached through the conciliation process. The unions have requested an adjournment. We have agreed to that but there is an agreement to meet again next month. I will leave it at that for now.

The responsibilities to be assigned to me as Minister of State for integration and priority work in these responsibilities are as follows. The Government commits to publishing a national action plan against racism for Ireland. An independent anti-racism committee established by Government in 2020 has created a draft action plan against racism supported in its work by the Department. We plan to launch that plan next month. The Government is committed to developing a successor to the migrant integration strategy and …

I will provide more information about community engagement as I was limited in my reply due to time constraints. In combination with the process within the Department of the Taoiseach, I am already drawing on my role in the Department of Rural and Community Development to use local networks that already exist and that will be very important to the integration and community engagement process. I am in three Departments at the moment. I am not in the Department of Health. I am aware of the GP issue. Last year, as par…

There were several issues there. There is great value to me being in the Departments of Rural and Community Development and Social Protection as well as the Department we are discussing, and that was the thinking behind bringing me to this Department. I also bring the community sector links to this Department. We have all seen at a grassroots level communities responding throughout last year and more recently to the challenges they face. It is very much my intention to bring that value, experience and connections t…

I thank the Deputy. I am aware of the issue she raised. She forwarded correspondence to my office regarding it. I will flag a couple of points of note. A community recognition fund of €50 million is available through the Department of Rural and Community Development, although that does not address the specific issues raised by the Deputy. I will talk to the Minister of Health, Deputy Donnelly, regarding the healthcare issues, which are coming up quite a bit. My Department has supplied additional community resources…

I propose to take Questions Nos. 9 and 13 together. My Department's mission is to promote rural and community development and to support vibrant, inclusive and sustainable communities throughout Ireland. My Department's social inclusion and community activation programme, SICAP, is our country's primary social inclusion programme. The current programme began on 1 January 2018 and will run until the end of 2023. The programme provides funding to tackle poverty and social exclusion at a local level through local enga…

There are many strands to the Deputy's question and many different funding schemes. I will try my best in the time I have to assure the Deputy that we have constructed two different models in our Department to try to capture everyone with regard to energy costs. The Deputy mentioned the community and voluntary energy support scheme. We have reopened that as of Tuesday and tweaked it because there were groups that we were not catching. The Deputy might check in on the eligibility for that. There were some organisati…

I can certainly look into how soon it can be released but it will be in 2023. I would be interested to hear where the issues were with SICAP allocation because there was a large increase last year. The safety net for many smaller groups will be through the allocation that we are giving to local authorities, which they will disburse through their local community development committees. We have allocated €362,000 to Cork County Council. I am not sure what stage the county council is at in opening that. It should be s…

The town centre first policy is a major cross-Government initiative that aims to tackle vacancy, combat dereliction and breathe new life into our town centres. Key to this is the establishment of the national implementation office to assist in the delivery and implementation of the policy and to co-ordinate stakeholder engagement at a national level. This office is also responsible for supporting town regeneration officers in driving the implementation of the policy at a county level. The national implementation of…

I thank the Deputy. I will give an update. We want the regeneration officers appointed as soon as possible. The money has been allocated so the authorities need to do this as soon as possible. We have nine appointed and three are expected to be in place early in the new year as well, but there are still a few to appoint. I will have to liaise with the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage on Croí Cónaithe as it is not our scheme. I acknowledge it is envisaged the plans will cover the importance of pla…

I thank the Deputy. The point is taken. I will take it back to the Minister. We in the Department are part of an oversight group together with the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, the Local Government Management Agency, LGMA, the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications, Irish Water, the Irish Local Development Network, ILDN, Irish Rural Link, Chambers Ireland, and there is a local enterprise office representative and the National Transport Authority, NTA, as well. We are all a…

I will keep my reply short and informal because we are under time pressure. I will try to answer the Deputy's questions as best I can. By visiting the Pobal website is the short answer to the Deputy's question about how groups can apply for the scheme. I also bring to the attention of other organisations that may not qualify under CVESS that Limerick City and County Council would have received an allocation of approximately €250,000, which will be run through the local community development committees, LCDCs. That …

I thank the Senator for raising this important issue. As Chair of the food poverty working group, which includes representatives of government Departments and civil society, I am a strong supporter of the school meals programme and its recent expansion. The school meals programme provides funding towards the provision of food services to some 1,600 schools and organisations benefitting 260,000 children. The objective of the programme is to provide regular, nutritious food to children to position them to take full a…

I again thank the Senator for raising the matter. To give a little more information on the evaluation commissioned earlier this year, it involved close consultation with all the stakeholders and workshops and interviews have been conducted with teachers, principles, children as well as suppliers. Key issues to be explored as part of the evaluation include: whether the schools meals programme meets its aims; what the practicalities are for schools moving to a hot school meals option; what works well and what is not …

I thank the Deputy for raising the issue of CE supervisor pay. In my answer I will also include assistant supervisors and supervisors of rural social scheme, RSS, and Tús schemes, who we also need to look at. My Department has been in negotiations with unions this year. Unions have gone to the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC, to open a conciliation process. The Department of Social Protection has been invited to that conciliation process. We should engage in that process, and we are ready to go into that and to…

I appreciate the Deputy pressing that sense of urgency. There are approximately 1,200 CE supervisors and assistant supervisors around the country. They provide an enormous service to their communities. They open pathways to work for people, provide a social inclusion service locally for people who would not otherwise be looked after and run key local services. We need to look after them. As the Deputy has said and as I said earlier, we need to look after Tús and RSS supervisors as well. We have had quite a bit of c…

I thank the Deputy for raising the issue of Carlow town library. I am taking this question on behalf of my colleague the Minister for Rural and Community Development, Deputy Humphreys. While the provision of library services, including the provision of buildings, is primarily a matter for local authorities in their capacity as library authorities under the Local Government Act 2001, the Department of Rural and Community Development has overall policy responsibility for the provision of public library services in Ir…