Human Rights and Equality Grant Scheme

The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission Act 2014 gives the Commission powers to provide grant funding to bodies to carry out certain activities to promote human rights and equality in Ireland. The themes of this year’s funding are informed by the priorities set out in the Commission’s Strategy Statement 2022-2024.

Grant Scheme 2022-2023

The closing date for receipt of applications has now passed. We will announce the successful recipients in late September.

In its Strategy Statement 2022-24, the Commission sets out five strategic priorities.

The focus of the 2022-2023 grant scheme will be supporting projects under two of those priorities:

Strategic Priority One: Economic Equality. Under the Economic Equality theme, the Commission will be specifically supporting projects that contribute to advancing greater economic equality in relation to one or a combination of these topics: housing/accommodation, employment, income or carers;
Strategic Priority Five: Public Sector Equality and Human Rights Duty. Under this Priority, the Commission’s focus will be to fund projects that support compliance with the Public Sector Equality and Human Rights Duty (the Duty).

A crosscutting priority will be supporting and empowering people and groups who face the greatest barriers to accessing their rights and who are the least heard. This includes people at risk of discrimination protected under the nine grounds of Ireland’s equality legislation: gender, civil status, family status, age, sexual orientation, disability, race, religion, membership of the Traveller community and people at risk of poverty and social exclusion

Therefore the Commission has added a new funding strand this year specifically targeting local civil society groups.