The Health Service Executive Social Inclusion budget for 2012 totalled €115 million. The allocation for this Care Group amounts to €114 million for 2013. This covers a range of areas including Addiction; Alcohol; Homelessness; Intercultural Health (i.e. Asylum seekers, refugees, migrants etc.); Irish Travellers and Roma; LGBT; and HIV/AIDS, together with elements of community development and gender based violence. The total Traveller health budget for 2011 amounted to €12.3 million. This amount does not include costs of health service provision of those mainstream services which members of the Traveller community are entitled to access. Finalised Traveller health budget figures for 2012 are not yet available but are expected to be approximately 2-5% lower than the 2011 figure, in line with the funding reductions applied as part of the requirement of the health service to meet ongoing financial challenges. A similar reduction is expected to apply during 2013. However efforts are being made to protect the funding allocated towards more vulnerable groups as far as possible.
