Jonathan O'Brien (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

There is no training budget for this scheme. As I understand it, a sum of €200 or so will be given towards health and safety aspects for anyone who is participating in the scheme, but there is no training and education budget and participants will not receive any qualification at the end of it.

The website of the Department of Social Protection includes the following statement in its description of what Gateway purports to do:

Work can only be undertaken on specific purpose projects or work that the County and City Councils used to undertake but no longer have resources to carry out...

Every Minister and Government Deputy who has spoken in this debate denied that the scheme is about job displacement, but the facts are there in black and white on the Department's website. We are talking about work which was formerly being done by the 9,000 local authority employees across the State who have left that employment. They are now being replaced by people who will be paid €20 per week for 19.5 hours of work. That is the fact of the matter.

The Department's website also states, "The work opportunities are intended to benefit the local area and are identified and provided by County and City councils". Local authorities, the website indicates, are to match the skills of those being offered positions with the work that requires to be done. A series of Government backbenchers have pointed to this scheme as allowing participants to gain new skills. There reality is that no new skills will be gained by anybody partaking in a Gateway scheme, because one of the criteria is that local authorities must match the skills of participants with the work that needs to be done. When a work placement is matched with somebody who has a particular skills set, that individual is not learning any additional skills. Claims to the contrary that have been spouted from the other side of the House are a falsehood.

Deputy Michael McNamara criticised Sinn Féin and other Opposition Members for belittling the work that will be done by participants in this scheme. Far from belittling the work these people are being asked to do, we want to reward them by paying them properly for that work. The only people doing any belittling are Members opposite who support these people being paid €1 per hour.

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