Mr. David Connolly:

If I could take up that point, aside from the money issue, we are concerned here with the fundamental role of community employment. Last April, just over 20% of the participants on community employment schemes were lone parents. This represents a significant drop on the previous position. Some 16% of the participants were those with disabilities. As Mr. Darragh O'Connor stated, we want to ensure we do not end up losing the entire concept behind community employment, namely, the benefits it has for the services sector, the individuals who partake of the scheme and the labour market, as a result of pressure arising from the scale of the unemployment problem. Community employment is targeted at those in particular circumstances such as the long-term unemployed, lone parents and those with disabilities. There is a belief that after being unemployed for six months, people need to be doing something and this gives rise to the pressure to which I refer. As Deputy Connaughton said, we need to ensure community employment will be viewed not merely as the quickest way to get large numbers of people back into the labour market.

I hope the thrust of the Department's presentation will be reflected in the wide range of labour market activation programmes which exist. I hope the baby will not be thrown out with the bathwater and that it will not be a case of deciding that it is all just about how large numbers of people can be placed on community employment schemes. As Deputy Ó Snodaigh stated, rehabilitation is no longer working in the cases of many lone parents who are drug addicts. There has been an 84% drop in this regard, which is an extremely serious development. Ring-fencing 1,000 places for those who are addicted to drugs was a vital element in the context of rehabilitation and really had nothing to do with CE. We do not want to lose these. There must be an incentive in the context of facilitating certain people with regard to CE rather than obliging them to just fit in with everyone else. That is the argument in respect of lone parents and those with disabilities.