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Minister for Community Development and Charities, Joe O’Brien, has today (Wednesday 16 November) announced over €44 million for the Social Inclusion and Community Activity Programme (SICAP) in 2023. This funding has been allocated as part of Budget 2023.
SICAP supports communities and individuals to engage with relevant stakeholders in identifying and addressing social exclusion and equality, developing the capacity of Local Community Groups and creating more sustainable communities. The programme supports disadvantaged individuals to improve the quality of their lives through the provision of lifelong learning and labour market supports issues.
Announcing the funding, the Minister said:
“I am pleased to announce this additional funding for SICAP underpinning this government’s ongoing commitment to social inclusion and community development. This programme has an explicit anti-poverty focus, promoting social inclusion and equality and is making a real difference in communities across the country.
“The programme is flexible and reactive and this has been evident in the support over the pandemic and most recently supporting people arriving from Ukraine. The SICAP programme reaches out to those most in need in disadvantaged areas, rural and urban, supporting individuals and communities to access mainstream services. This funding is being provided to enable the Local Development Companies (LDC’s) to continue the great work they are doing, retain staff and direct additional resources to the delivery of SICAP.”
Individuals and Community groups can reach out to their Local Development Company for support.
SICAP, the government’s primary social inclusion programme aims to reduce poverty and promote social inclusion and equality through supporting communities and individuals via community development, engagement, and collaboration.
SICAP supports communities and target groups to engage with relevant stakeholders developing the capacity of Local Community Groups (2646 LCGs supported in 2021) and creating more sustainable communities.
SICAP supports disadvantaged individuals (26,483 individuals supported in 2021) to improve the quality of their lives through the provision of lifelong learning and labour market supports.
SICAP is funded by the Department of Rural and Community Development and co-funded by the European Social Fund (ESF) under the Programme for Employability, Inclusion and Learning (PEIL) 2014 - 2021.
SICAP is managed at a local level by 33 Local Community Development Committees (LCDCs), with support from local authorities. The programme is implemented nationally by 46 Local Development Companies (LDCs) across 51 areas.
A 10% increase (€4 million) was secured for the programme for 2022, the largest increase since the programme was launched, bringing the budget to €43 million.
An additional €5 million funding was announced on 1 June to support the LDCs through SICAP for the community response to support people arriving from Ukraine.
In June, SICAP was awarded the prestigious United Nations Public Service award in the category of “Institutional resilience and innovative responses to the COVID-19 pandemic”.
The department secured an increase of €1.3 million (3%) to the 2023 SICAP budget, bringing the total allocation to €44.3 million.