Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with Deputies Catherine Murphy, Boyd Barrett, Wallace and Clare Daly.

I fully support the sentiments in the motion put forward by Sinn Féin. In 2008 Dublin City Council had 7,500 employees. It now has 5,000. By September next, it is due to have only 4,800 employees. This means that more than one third of the staff of the council will have left during a six-year period. That has had a huge impact on all services offered by the council, including parks, maintenance, etc. On Monday night last, a family home was attacked and a number of windows were smashed. Staff from the Ballyfermot maintenance depot arrived at the scene of the crime and stated that they had neither the staff nor the money necessary to replace the windows. Instead, they are going to board up the windows with wood. The family involved continues to live in the house.

The staff of the parks department of Dublin City Council in Dublin South Central has been cut by 25%. There are now no staff available to open and close the gates to or to maintain the playing area at Drimnagh pitch and putt club. The course will now be left open all the time, with no support available.

Dublin City Council has no training, transport or education budgets in respect of the Gateway scheme. What the council needs to be able to do is employ proper gatekeepers rather than being obliged to operate the Gateway scheme. Participants on Gateway will be paid an additional €20 for 19.5 hours work per week. This translates to a little more than €1 per hour. The Government describes it as a labour activation scheme but it would be that only if there were jobs available at the end of it. When it reduced the jobseeker's allowance, the Government encouraged its backbenchers to defend the move by saying that those in receipt of it are at home watching their flat screen TVs. On this occasion they are defending Gateway by stating that it will allow people to experience what it is like to get up in the morning. How shameful it is that the Labour Party is playing a role in facilitating the introduction of this scheme. That party is really scraping the bottom of the barrel and Gateway is nothing more than a slave labour initiative.

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