Summary of ideas submitted in the Social and voluntary category…

• Prisoners to work on infrastructure projects.
• Promote the Scouts for children.
• Promote time sharing.
• Promote volunteering.
• Provide a matching-up database/ website for people with a garden or green space which might have room to grow vegetables/ food but who cannot work it, with people who could.
• Provide database/ website to match up voluntary skill trainers with course organisers and venues.
• Provide teenagers with better sex education.
• Public and private works projects throughout the next two years requiring skilled and unskilled volunteers.
• ‘RAK Team’ (Random Acts of Kindness Team).
• Rather than having individuals on the dole with no work they should be encouraged to work for the community. (There were several variants on this idea)
• Rather than just pay unemployed money each week, give people a role in the community.
• Ready-to-work scheme for people who are signing on the dole.
• Recruit more into the Garda Reserves.
• Re-establishment of co-ops in rural Ireland, but this time not for intensive agriculture, but to enable small otherwise unviable land holdings group together and provide a quality produce that would fit into the organic food category.
• Reform social welfare to allow people to work.
• Reintroduce the DA+ scheme where people could hold on to their DA and get a top-up for work done.
• Resident committees to improve local areas.
• Retired individuals to teach in GAA centres around the country.
• Review the child benefit scheme.
• Run a summer school for children aged from 15 upwards that it would gainfully occupy young teens for the summer. Give kids a “taste” for work.
• Secondary school/college students should have to do two hours of social service per week.
• Second-hand toy shops
• Sellers and buyers barter in units of their own time and professional services.
• Set up a website for those that want to work for an extra bonus on top of their benefit
• Set up website on which people could register as volunteers.
• Shorten the community scheme.
• Singe mother allowance to be spent on childcare.
• Skilled housewives offering help for free.
• Social welfare payment linked to community work completed.
• Some sort of tax relief or tax credit on volunteering/community work.
• Special funds in place that people can contribute to that helps people to plan for their funeral.
• Split social welfare into cash and voucher system. Vouchers used for essentials. Everybody has or gets paid value points not cash.
• Sporting Officer in many clubs around the country.
• State funding for businesses in urban areas should be improved.
• Stop putting debtors in prison. Instead get them to work off their debt by doing community work.