Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

-----but I remind the Minister there was high demand for soup kitchens also when the need was there. When the expectations of unemployed people are lowered so much, it is to be expected that some people might welcome such schemes in the lamentable absence of better training, education and employment opportunities. When Government Deputies point to whatever number of people might be willing participants in the scheme, they conveniently gloss over the compulsion attached to it and the penalties which will apply to those who do not take it up when required to do so. They wilfully ignore the fact social welfare officers will select candidates for the scheme and not the other way around.

Let us be very clear this is neither training nor is it a gateway to employment. It is a cheap labour scheme. It sends unemployed people to local authorities to do work many of the 25% of their staff laid off since 2011 would have done and would still be doing today if they were employed. A scheme offering €20 on top of a dole payment for 19.5 hours per week for 22 months, doing work once done by unionised workers in local authorities, begs the question if this is what the Labour Party has sold its soul for in coalition with Fine Gael.

A community development activist in my home county of Monaghan has already done a study on Gateway and similar schemes. He points out the State is a party to the Forced Labour Convention of 1930 and thus "undertakes to suppress the use of forced or compulsory labour in all its forms". This is what the State signed up to. The European Convention on Human Rights states, "No one shall be required to perform forced or compulsory labour".

What has the Government learned from schemes already in place? It has learned nothing from JobBridge where a €50 top-up applied. Even the top-up is significantly less in the Gateway scheme. It must go and new measures need to be introduced.

See this speech in context