As schools, colleges and workplaces continue the migration to online and remote activities during the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic, an IT divide preventing engagement has been uncovered across city and county communities which organisations in Cork are moving swiftly to address.

Cork ETB, which is responsible for the delivery of primary, secondary and further education and training services, as well as funding youth services, is facilitating attempts to ensure people are not further distanced from education or the work opportunities because of difficulties accessing technology. Several new funding initiatives are being rolled out.

Almost €1m in a Mitigating Against Educational Disadvantage (MAED) Fund was administered by Cork ETB and SOLAS with some 62 groups applying, while a further €125,000 was given directly to youth organisations to plug gaps in that sector. A separate emergency pot of money is being administered by Cork City Council reaching out to several organisations.

The MAED Fund provides supports to enable learners engage with education and training programmes and address some of the impediments impacting on engagement and continued programme participation arising from the current lockdown situation. 

Denis Leamy, Chief Executive of Cork Education and Training Board pointed out that learning and engagement can be revolutionised to meet current and future challenges when the right technology is made available. “This welcome funding, across several streams, will go a long way to enabling active engagement from various groups and learners throughout Cork city and county,” he said.

A number of digital IT hubs are set to create in locations in urban and rural areas in an effort to ‘level the playing field’ as part of a government ICT grant, while several clubs and volunteer-led organisations successfully applied to upgrade or purchase devices.

In parallel, a group led by Cork ETB, Cork City Council, UCC and CIT along with some industry partners – among them DellEMC – was formed during the first lockdown to look at the difficulties faced by learners accessing devices and connectivity when schools, colleges and libraries had to close. 

It became obvious very soon in the first lockdown that people were being isolated from online activities because of device and connectivity issues,” explained CETB Senior Youth Officer Mick Finn. A lot of work was done very quickly to identify these issues and it’s fair to say that individuals and communities are better equipped in the most recently applied restrictions. The grant schemes from local and national government have helped to plug the gaps but more work is required to determine if there are still people and groups still on the peripheries of online involvement.

As part of the collaboration, devices were delivered by organisations to families in temporary homeless accommodation, young people in direct provision and members of the Travelling Community.

A laptop loan scheme is also being made available in the city’s libraries while some local youth services have increased their capacities to help provide ICT services for their target groups. We are fortunate that Cork has many great partnerships among community services in the city and county and this will help to provide launching pads for IT support into each area that needs it.

It was also suggested by the working group that major retail groups should consider promotions where people could collect tokens while shopping and purchase laptops or tablets at discounted rates. Some of these companies have seen their business increase considerably and it would be opportune for them to help out in this fashion as they do with other community supports.


Help support Cork Safety Alerts by becoming a member – Click Here