Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 14 July 2022
116. Deputy Marc Ó Cathasaigh asked the Minister for Social Protection if she will report on the latest meeting of the Social Inclusion Forum and on any outcomes from that meeting; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [34875/22]
View answerI hosted the Department's annual Social Inclusion Forum last week in the Bracken Court Hotel in Balbriggan.
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 is arranged by the Department of Social Protection, with the European Anti-Poverty Network Ireland and Community Work Ireland as event partners.
The theme for this year's Forum was maintaining momentum in the implementation of Government’s Roadmap for Social Inclusion, 2020-2025, which is the national strategy to reduce poverty and improve social inclusion. While the recent reductions in key national poverty indicators have been welcome, the Forum helps to place that data in context - in the forum we get to hear about the lived experience behind the statistics, and indeed from people who are not separately identified in official statistics.
The Forum included four workshops on key Roadmap themes – income adequacy, social inclusion and children, social inclusion and people with disabilities, and supporting communities – with facilitators from the community and voluntary sector, and presentations from expert practitioners. I attended and listened to some of the discussions at each of the four workshops, as well as the online workshop arranged for those who couldn't attend in-person, and then engaged in a panel discussion with community and voluntary representatives.
These discussions will feed into the Roadmap's mid-term review, which commenced with stakeholder engagement at the Social Inclusion Forum. 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.
