The purpose of this Roadmap for Social Inclusion is not to duplicate or substitute for these other national strategies which remain, and rightly so, key to ensuring that social inclusion is at the core of public policy and service strategy across all departments and Government services. Accordingly the purpose of this Roadmap is threefold:

• Set a level of ambition for what it is we wish to achieve and to have this ambition inform and be reflected in sectoral and service plans across Government as they are renewed and updated over coming years.
• Identify specific commitments, particularly with regard to income supports and employment services, which will complement the sectoral approaches and ensure that the risk of poverty and deprivation is minimised, with priority given to the needs of those experiencing or at risk of experiencing the poorest outcomes. The development of strategies and ambitions is subject to the expenditure envelope available and negotiations throughout the budgetary cycles over the period of this Roadmap.
• Set up an evidence-based framework for monitoring and reporting progress both to hold ourselves to account and to inform the renewal of existing, and the development of future, sectoral strategies.

This document therefore sets out our level of ambition, accompanied by specific targets to be achieved against a comprehensive set of metrics, with appropriate disaggregation, including by gender, where data is available. For each ambition it identifies key commitments with timelines for delivery by identified lead agencies. It also sets out a governance approach for monitoring and reporting progress. There are 66 unique commitments, three of which appear across multiple chapters reflecting the structure of the Roadmap.

In short in this Roadmap we set out to be ambitious in our intent and specific in our commitments, which when delivered will help to make Ireland one of the most socially inclusive countries in Europe.