Plans to introduce citizenship education into primary schools and encourage more people to vote in elections are among the recommendations of a Government taskforce aimed at promoting greater involvement by citizens in the community.
The Taskforce on Active Citizenship, chaired by Special Olympics chairwoman Mary Davis, also sets targets to increase the number of volunteers in all aspects of life by 60,000 each year over the next three years.
Among the 25 recommendations set out in its report, due to be published by Taoiseach Bertie Ahern tomorrow, include:
Establishing an electoral commission to encourage more people to vote in elections, especially sections of the population with a low turnout at election time;
Ensuring community and recreational facilities become a priority in new local authority development plans;
Formal citizenship ceremonies for immigrants in which the rights and responsibilities of newcomers will be emphasised;
An awards ceremony involving the President, for young people who make a significant contribution to community and voluntary activity;
A new initiative to strengthen and support the community and voluntary sectors in training volunteers and helping community groups meet administrative costs;
Reforming community forums across the State to ensure people have the opportunity to have their voice heard by local authorities.
The report, based on nine months of consultations, public meetings and more than 1,000 submissions, emphasises how these recommendations should be implemented.
It says a Government office on active citizenship should be formed - based loosely on the recently established Office of the Minister for Children - which would implement the recommendations.
The office would include senior civil servants and would report to the Department of An Taoiseach.
The recommendations are likely to be seen as significant given that members of the taskforce which approved the final recommendations include the secretary general of the Department of An Taoiseach, Dermot McCarthy.
The office, in which civil servants would be "co-located", would be established for an initial three-year period.
In the area of implementation, it sets a number of targets to increase the pool of people actively involved in the community, voting and other forms of civic engagement over the next three years.
These targets could be monitored under new research being conducted by the Central Statistics Office and the Economic and Social Research Institute, the report suggests.
It also recommends further improvements to the way we measure volunteerism in order to assess changes over the coming years.
Despite anecdotal evidence of a downturn in volunteerism, the report suggests that the nature of volunteerism has changed.
It remarks that people are tending to get involved in initiatives with a more limited time commitment.
