Social Inclusion Division

Since 1997 Ireland has developed national anti-poverty strategies to provide a strategic framework in which to tackle poverty and social exclusion. Over time a range of national sectoral strategies have been developed across government which include social inclusion as a core objective. The Department of Social Protection (DSP) has overall responsibility for the development of a whole-of-government policy focusing on reducing poverty and improving social inclusion. This policy recognises the strong role that other departments play, alongside DSP, in delivering poverty reduction and social inclusion objectives.

Roadmap for Social Inclusion 2020-2025

In January 2020, the Department of Social Protection published the Roadmap for Social Inclusion 2020 - 2025: Ambition, Goals and Commitments. This whole-of-government strategy 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.

Measuring Poverty in Ireland: The official measure of poverty in Ireland is 'consistent poverty'. This indicator is the overlap of two component indicators:

• ‘at-risk-of-poverty’ which identifies individuals with household incomes below 60% of the median; and
• ‘basic deprivation’ which captures individuals lacking 2 or more of 11 basic necessities.

This consistent poverty measure reflects the multidimensional understanding of poverty and is designed to identify the population with the greatest needs in terms of being both income-poor and deprived.

Poverty and social inclusion rates are taken from the household income and living conditions data collected by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) through the EU Survey on Income and Living Conditions. The most recent poverty data can be found here.

The Social Inclusion Monitor is an annual* monitoring tool which reports on progress towards the national targets for poverty reduction and social inclusion. It also examines Ireland’s contribution to the EU poverty target and examines progress on targets contained in the Roadmap for Social Inclusion 2020-2025.

• It should be noted that a Combined Social Inclusion Monitor for 2018 and 2019 was published in 2021.

In March 2021 Joe O’Brien, Minister of State at the Departments of Social Protection and Rural and Community Development with special responsibility for Community Development and Charities, announced the establishment of a Working Group to tackle the issue of food poverty in accordance with the commitment on food poverty in the Roadmap for Social Inclusion.

To date the Food Poverty Working Group has published three pieces of work:

• a mapping exercise of programmes, services and supports across Government that address food poverty from which a report was published on 18 July 2022
• a research project analysing the prevalence of food poverty in two case study areas, one rural and one urban
• a cross Government Action Plan which aims to address food poverty in Ireland

The Government is committed to engagement with a wide range of stakeholders with an interest and involvement in social inclusion policies and practice. Engagement with people experiencing poverty and social exclusion, and the community and voluntary groups that represent them, is an important facet of the monitoring and development of government policy on poverty and social exclusion.

Engagement takes place on an ongoing basis throughout the year and in a variety of fora organised by the Department of Social Protection, and also in the interactions between all Government departments and the various representative groups (including national and international NGOs and national and local community and voluntary groups). At a local level, department representatives are members of Local Community and Development Committees, along with representatives from other departments and/or state agencies, and regularly engage with other local community structures.

These regular interactions and conversations continuously inform the development, implementation and evaluation of poverty reduction and social inclusion policy.

Social Inclusion Forum

The annual* Social Inclusion Forum, which is organised by the Department of Social Protection, provides the opportunity for people experiencing poverty and social exclusion and the community and voluntary sector groups that represent them to engage directly with policy officials and policy makers from a range of government departments. It allows for a robust debate between the attendees about the policy and social exclusion issues that most concern them. A conference report is prepared each year and is laid before both Houses of the Oireachtas. The reports can be found here.

• It should be noted that due to the COVID-19 restrictions, the Social Inclusion Forum did not take place in 2020.

United Nations International Day for the Eradication of Poverty

Each year the Department provides funding for small public awareness initiatives to promote awareness of the UN International Day for the Eradication of Poverty and support the work of the Irish 17 October Committee in networking with the groups responsible for the various commemorative initiatives and projects nationwide. This funding is open to anti-poverty organisations and groups working with people experiencing poverty at national or local level.

Applications are now closed for the funding initiative for UN Day 2024.

Queries may be directed to the Social Inclusion Division at social.inclusion@welfare.ie.

Young Social Innovators (YSI)

The Department of Social Protection also supports work of the Young Social Innovators (YSI). The YSI programme aims to raise social awareness among 15-18 year olds in Ireland so that they might become effective champions for social justice. The Department sponsors the school poverty challenge ‘Making Our Country More Inclusive and Poverty Free’. More information on the types of projects funded in recent years under this programme is available here

The Department’s research programme has played a central role in informing national anti-poverty strategies and action plans for social inclusion and the Department funds two separate poverty and social inclusion research streams.

The first provides for a multi-annual programme of research and consultancy to monitor and report on progress towards the national social target for poverty reduction, and on related poverty trends. The research analyses the latest national data on income, deprivation and services from the annual Survey in Income and Living Conditions (SILC), to identify trends, conduct comparative EU analysis and to indicate the implications for policy. The current contract is with the Irish Economic Social and Research Institute (ESRI).

A second funding stream is available to promote research excellence and innovation on poverty and social exclusion among third level institutions. In recent years funding has been provided through a research programme coordinated by the Irish Research Council.

The Department of Social Protection has overall responsibility for the monitoring and evaluation of the whole-of-government policy focusing on reducing poverty and improving social inclusion. A number of approaches are used to achieve this:

As previously mentioned the Department produces the annual Social Inclusion Monitor which is the official report on progress towards the National Social Target for Poverty Reduction (section 2: Key Policy Information).

Poverty Impact Assessment (formerly poverty proofing) is a requirement under the Revised Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA) Guidelines 2009, and Sn 3.4 of the Cabinet Handbook for preparing Memos for Government. It is the process by which government departments, local authorities and State agencies assess policies and programmes at design, implementation and review stages in relation to the likely impact that they will have or have had on poverty and on inequalities which are likely to lead to poverty, with a view to poverty reduction.

Social Impact Assessment (SIA) is an evidence-based methodology to estimate the likely distributive effects of policy proposals on income and social inequality. It uses a tax-welfare simulation model known as SWITCH, which was developed by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), to measure the distributive and poverty impacts of policies on family types, lifecycle groups and gender. Since Budget 2013, the Department has published an integrated SIA which includes the main welfare and direct tax measures in annual budgets. Its purpose is to inform public understanding on the cumulative effect of budgetary policies on income distribution and social equality.