George Lawlor backs Trading for Impact and calls for business supports

Can I say that this question was originally submitted to the Minister for Enterprise Trade and Employment and transferred across to your department. I submitted to Enterprise Trade and Employment on the basis of the significant 4,300 social enterprises making an indeed significant contribution to the Irish economy. In 2021 it was £2.34 billion and 57% of this was in urban areas and 43% in rural areas. Social enterprises are recording a significant employment contribution of some 85,000 people in the Irish workforce and certainly whilst the social aspect of it is being covered and looked after I think we need to look at it from a business point of view as well. Thank you. Having just transferred to the Department of Enterprise myself I know how your question feels. The Department of Rural and Community Development has policy responsibility for social enterprise in Ireland since the Department was established in 2017. Trading for Impact which is the national social enterprise policy 2024-2027 was launched in July 2024. That was a successor to the first national social enterprise policy which was published in 2019. Development of Trading for Impact was carried out in partnership with the social enterprise sector that you've just referred to. A series of bilateral meetings were held with key stakeholders including government departments, sectoral representative bodies and networks including the local development companies, the local development company network formerly known as ILDN, the regional stakeholder events and finally we had public consultation which took 43 submissions from stakeholders. In addition, my department commissioned two major pieces of research to underpin the development of trading for impact. The first was a baseline data collation exercise on the scale and on the scope of social enterprise in Ireland. The second was an OECD in-depth policy review of social enterprise and entrepreneurship ecosystem in Ireland. The trading for impact details 57 policy actions under five key objectives. Implementation is to be informed by a stakeholder engagement group made up of the key stakeholders and we'll be announcing the membership of this group shortly. It is an area I'm going to be very interested in working with Minister Budimer. I had many meetings with Social Enterprise Ireland during my time in the Department of Enterprise with John Logan. The CEO and certainly I think there is massive potential here. We also need to support the existing social enterprises. Thank you. I very much welcome your your commitment to social enterprise and you're correct when you suggest that the local development companies network had a number of consultations throughout the country and indeed continue to do so. There is however a belief amongst leader companies in particular that maybe a more specific targeted supports to social enterprise in the more disadvantaged areas are necessary. They said one of the biggest challenges facing them as a social enterprise is the balance between meeting the social need be that in the context of those employed in the enterprise but also the business acumen required in the context of running and the operation of the business. As was put to me by a person immersed in the area of social enterprise often the passion to fix the issue affecting a community needs the same business passion to make it work. They are of course using the benefit of the site cap the bridge the gap between the social aspect and the commercial control aspect with training and mentoring supports. Can I ask if the minister and his department would be open to sitting down with social enterprise in our local development companies to look at a proposal in regard to the business running it? I look forward to working with the local development company network. They have just rebranded and this is going to be key area of focus and yeah actually you've just touched on something there in terms of managing capability. People have really good ideas but it's the actual unfortunately the execution of the good idea can often be a challenge can often intimidate people from taking the step and I certainly want to work both in that space and also my role as Minister for social protection around back to enterprise scheme as well to address those issues and give people the backup and the scaffolding that's needed to take the jump and maybe to actually move from an idea to implementation be that in social enterprise or be that back to enterprise. So between our two departments between Northern Community Development and also Department of Social Protection this is something I'd like to work in cohesion in as far as possible. Thank you Minister. Once again I welcome your comments I think you you hit the nail on the head where often people who have very very good ideas don't have the business acumen or are indeed afraid to present themselves forward with a business plan. I know indeed in Wexford in Wexford local development we have three fabulous in-house social enterprises in Cafe Connect, Epic and the little job service indeed Cafe Connect is a terrific example of how people who've been left on the margins can be immersed into the area of helping themselves working with themselves and under the stewardship of Julie Codd in Wexford local development the Cafe Connect has been a hugely successful commercial commercial enterprise and indeed the benefits of this are both varied and many. I know Cafe Connect deal with people who are recovering from addiction issues who are now running a wonderfully successful business venture and I would invite you to come to Wexford at some stage and view it first hand and I'll even stand your coffee on it on that basis. Thank you very much Minister. Don't worry Minister Brown has promised me coffee down there. It sounds like a fabulous project and they're the current projects we want to see around. They sound like very much a community services project which is supporting 430 community-based organisations to provide local economic environmental services with 1700 full-time posts and 340 manager posts supported from the department. Last year we published the Achieve Together social innovation, culturing and mentoring programme which is co-funded under Ireland's DSF operation programme that provides bespoke mentors and coaches to existing CSB supported organisations for a 12-month period and that will address some of the issues that we discussed about in the previous question in terms of sustainability, in terms of providing better services and definitely that's the kind of model I want to see grow and we'll hopefully be growing out the Achieve Together programme across the country and making it available to other organisations. Thanks man.