Rob Nicholson works as a principal officer in the Department of Rural and Community Development (DRCD) with responsibility for the development and implementation of Ireland’s National Social Enterprise Policy and – speaking at a recent awards ceremony – he gave “a heads-up” on what to expect in the second iteration of that policy.
The public consultation on social enterprise policy was held late last year and the draft new national social enterprise policy will be published shortly. Watch Rob speak here or read on for a summary:
“It’s still a nascent sector,” said Rob, noting that change will come quickly in the years ahead as EU law comes into force: “We’ve been flagging that inside government and across all the aspects of government.”
There will be five themes under the new policy which will run until 2027.
They will include an awareness-raising strand, a strand on access to finance, support for social enterprises with capacity go grow, and sustaining support for those who cannot scale up.
“Also for first time we’ll have a dedicated section on the green transition, taking a lead from the UN Sustainable Development Goals,” he said.
“We are looking at national and international engagement. How do we make sure policy is implemented? And it’s a rapidly changing environment. We anticipate much more engagement with the EU in the future regarding social enterprise,” he added.
Rob said the Department’s policies have to be informed by evidence – which was one of the reasons he was present in Tullamore for the awards. Congratulating all who took part, he said measuring quantitative versus qualitative data is always a challenge. He thanked the ILDN for running the competition and adjudicating on the entries – read our awards report here.
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