INOU NSEP II Submission

This document is the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed (INOU) submission to the Department of Rural and Community Development on the development of the second National Social Enterprise Policy for Ireland to cover the period 2024-2027. Amongst the points made in this submission, the INOU notes that "Equality was named as one of the five core principles underpinning the first National Social Enterprise Policy. It will be critical to maintain and build on this principle in the next policy to ensure that “the Government’s commitments to equality, human rights and social cohesion, including efforts to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals in Ireland.” (p24) are being acted on appropriately. To that end, it will be critical that Ireland’s national social enterprise policy not only supports people and communities experiencing socio-economic exclusion to play an active part in the design and roll-out of social enterprises that meet their social and economic needs but that the appropriate steps are taken to collect and analyse the data to ensure that this is happening. In particular, a good assessment is made to ascertain if any measures to secure more ‘mainstream’ enterprise supports for social enterprises are available across the spectrum of social enterprises."