SOCIAL PARTNERSHIP

NAPS, Revised NAPS and Sustaining Progress

Combating poverty and social exclusion requires not just a governmental response but a wider societal response to the challenge. The development and implementation of the strategies, therefore, involves the social partners, employers, trade unions, farmers and the community and voluntary sector. Continued economic development is essential to underpin the strategy, and the ongoing redistribution of resources to the less well off can best be achieved through consensus among all the parties in the partnership process.

The first NAPS, Sharing in Progress, was drawn up in 1997 after widespread consultation and subsequently endorsed in a social partnership agreement, Programme for Prosperity and Fairness. A commitment was also made to extend the scope of the NAPS and revise key aspects. Following a further extensive consultative process, the revised NAPS, Building an Inclusive Society, was launched in February 2002.

In April 2003 the next partnership agreement, Sustaining Progress, recognised that the challenge then, in a more difficult economic climate, was to achieve the targets set out the previous year in the revised NAPS. This agreement also set down a major part of the agenda for the further development of the NAPS through the agreed commitment to pursue a series of special initiatives on the basis of dialogue between Government and the social partners. The ten Special Initiatives chosen for inclusion in the national agreement relate to all major crosscutting issues that require mobilisation of a range of resources across sectors, organisations and individuals and at different levels of Government, and are as follows:

• Ending child poverty (the Office for Social Inclusion has lead responsibility for co-ordinating this initiative);
• Tackling educational disadvantage - literacy, numeracy and early school leavers;
• Long-term unemployed, vulnerable workers and those who have been made redundant;
• Care - children, people with disabilities and older people;
• Migration and interculturalism;
• Housing and accommodation;
• Alcohol/drug abuse;
• Including everyone in the information society;
• Cost and Availability of Insurance; and
• Waste Management

The emphasis, in pursuing these initiatives, has been on all the social partners working together, building consensus and adopting a problem-solving approach to finding practical solutions. There are obvious synergies between a number of the initiatives which are of key importance to the National Action Plan:

Social Inclusion Consultative Group (SICG)

Representatives of the social partners who ratified Sustaining Progress are represented on the Social Inclusion Consultative Group which offers advice and observations on the NAPS process as it develops. The establishment of this Group is provided for in the revised NAPS. It is chaired jointly by the Department the Taoiseach and the Office for Social Inclusion. Topics considered to date included: the development of the second NAP/inclusion; monitoring implementation of this plan in the context of drawing up this first Annual Report on the plan, and EU and other relevant international developments.

The main subjects on which advice is sought includes the evaluation of the implementation of the NAP/inclusion, the outcomes being achieved and the priorities for action in the next NAP/inclusion covering the period 2006 - 2008.

Special Initiatives - Consultation

Representatives of the social partners are involved in the development of the special initiatives and in monitoring and evaluating their progress, a process co-ordinated by the Department of the Taoiseach. Regular reports on progress on the Initiatives are provided, which relate both to current actions, and to identifying initiatives and priorities for future policy development.

As part of the mid-term review of Sustaining Progress a progress report on the special initiatives was published. The experience from the first phase of work on the initiatives has underlined their complexity and multidimensional nature. The process has meant that greater clarity and focus has been brought to complex issues and it has highlighted the need for differing or more collaborative ways of working.

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