Thirteen organisations in Ireland have received grants for projects intended to remove barriers and improve women’s access to employment. The individual awards listed for the round add up to €2,056,657.73, with each organisation receiving between €100,000 and €200,000.
The funding is being provided through the Gender Equality Action within the Employment, Inclusion, Skills and Training programme for 2021 to 2027. It is intended to support women seeking to pursue work, training and economic opportunity in fields of their choice. The award round identifies the gender pay gap as one of the barriers that can affect women’s participation and progression, but it does not claim that the grants by themselves will eliminate that gap.
A nationwide set of projects
The funded work is spread across a range of places and organisations. In Dublin, An Cosán has been awarded €119,621 for its Women’s Springboard Employment Programme. South Dublin County Partnership has received €158,214 for a project called Returning Strong. A further Dublin-linked award goes to One Family for its New Futures Employability Programme for lone parents, which is listed at €115,711 and is intended to operate in Dublin and two sites in Munster.
Now Training and Employment Enterprise has received €192,204 for Hidden Potential Employment Pathways. The project is intended to support women across Dublin and Louth, including women who are neurodiverse, autistic or have a learning difficulty. Women’s Collective Ireland has received €134,400 for its STEPS to Employment for Women programme, with work listed across Dublin as well as Clare, Mayo, Waterford, Wexford and Westmeath.
Other awards reach beyond the capital. Ballyhoura Development has received €199,670.14 for Rural Women Progressing: Pathways to Better Work, covering its North Cork and south-east Limerick area. Cavan and Monaghan Education and Training Board has been awarded €191,772.30 for a women’s hospitality and sustainable-local-enterprise project. People 1st Employment and Skills, based in Donegal, has received €174,778.32 for a programme for women returning to the workforce.
The remaining recipients include organisations working in Limerick, Cork, Wicklow, Roscommon and the wider north-east. The projects differ in setting and stated focus, but the common purpose of the grant round is wider access to employment and economic opportunity for women. The awards should not be read as evidence that a particular participant has already obtained work, a qualification or a specified increase in pay.
What the funding does and does not establish
The programme is co-funded by Ireland and the European Union through the European Social Fund Plus. Its wider Employment, Inclusion, Skills and Training programme represents investment of more than €1.08 billion over its life, including €508 million from the European Union and €573 million from Ireland. That wider figure covers the whole programme, not this single set of awards.
The immediate development is the allocation of grants to the 13 named organisations. The announcement anticipates that further funding may be made available to these projects during the remaining programme period next year, but it does not set out a separate sum, payment timetable or guarantee for that future funding. Nor does it publish a collective job-placement target, enrolment dates or a common eligibility process for individual women.
Those limits matter when assessing what the awards can achieve. Funding can enable organisations to design and deliver support, but its eventual effect will depend on the programmes they run, the people who take part and the opportunities available locally. The new grants therefore mark a defined public investment in employment access rather than a completed outcome. For people interested in a particular project, the relevant question will be how and when that organisation opens participation, rather than an assumption that a grant announcement automatically creates an immediate place or job.
