Inclusion

The 13th OECD Rural Development Conference, hosted by Ireland’s Department of Rural and Community Development (DRCD) has kicked off this morning in County Cavan. Overnight, a large team led by Department's Dr. Andrew Forde put the finishing touches to conference arrangements and delegates arrived to a momentous Céad Míle Fáilte this morning.

Cavan tonight began to welcome 400 people from as far away as Canada, Korea, Latvia and Columbia for an international gathering of rural development workers, policy makers, academics and ministers and their officials. They are in town to attend a major conference titled ‘Building Sustainable, Resilient and Thriving Rural Places’.

As Budget 2023 is moved forward to September 27, Changing Ireland examines some of the key proposals of groups working in the social inclusion and community sector.

Major reforms to Community Employment (CE), Tús and the Rural Social Scheme (RSS) have been widely welcomed, with one public representative saying he had seen "grown men crying" when they had to leave schemes.

Ireland has won a United Nations award for its response at community level to the Covid pandemic. The UN received over 350 entries from 58 countries for 10 awards - with Ireland winning one for its Social Inclusion and Community Activation Programme (SICAP).

Mary Hurley has been appointed as the new Secretary General at the Department of Rural and Community Development.

Gone is “the fear that the next knock on the door will be someone to take us away”, said Tjanasi Potso, responding to today’s announcement by Justice Minister Helen McEntee of an amnesty for undocumented migrants.

Last year, they sought two new members for Pobal’s board; this year they have six vacancies and chairperson Rosarii Mannion is calling on people with community development experience to apply.