Roadmap for Social Inclusion 2020-2025

The Roadmap for Social Inclusion 2020 - 2025: Ambition, Goals and Commitments was published in January 2020. It is the successor to the National Action Plan for Social Inclusion which concluded at the end of 2017 and is the latest in a series of such plans dating back to 1997.

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.

Progress towards the Roadmap goals are set out in annual Progress Reports, with associated Report Cards which detail progress on each of the 81 Roadmap commitments (originally 69 commitments).

The Roadmap committed to an independent mid-term review of the Roadmap at the mid-point. The intention was to carry out a mid-term review of the existing strategy, align it with developments since publication and identify priorities for the remaining duration of the strategy, rather than develop a new strategy. The Department of Social Protection appointed Ipsos to undertake independent stakeholder engagement to inform the mid-term review, which included a public consultation exercise (in September 2022 and October 2022), details of which can be found here. Under the joint Poverty and Social Inclusion research programme with the Department of Social Protection, the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) undertook a review of the indicators used to measure progress against Roadmap ambitions and goals for the mid-term review. The Mid-term Review Report for the Roadmap for Social Inclusion 2020-2025 was published, alongside the Ipsos and ESRI reports, at the 2023 Social Inclusion Forum.

Progress Reports

Mid-term Review

Consultation Submissions

Mid-Term Review of the Roadmap for Social Inclusion 2020-2025 - Submissions