Mr. John Stewart:

The Deputy has identified two important aspects in respect of the submission from the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed, INOU. First, family income supplement, FIS, is a really important support for unemployed people with families in the context of taking up work. Moreover, it is a support that is under-used by the State, and its availability must be much more significantly publicised. However, there are aspects of it that clearly need to be reviewed, particularly concerning how it is paid. We believe it must be paid automatically and the entire application process must be simplified. Clearly, there are issues with regard to hours, and that is the reason we are calling for this aspect, as well as the working week in particular, to be reviewed. That issue obviously goes beyond family income supplement and the Deputy has touched on something that is really important. The feedback we receive all the time from unemployed people often pertains to the type of work that is available, to how those hours are distributed during the week and to how the social welfare system treats one hour's work as a day's work for which no welfare payments is made. This is a real issue for people that definitely must be addressed.

The community employment scheme is an important programme for unemployed people. With regard to the duration of people's participation in community employment schemes, a year might be sufficient for a particular person - depending on his or her pre-existing level of skills, work experience, etc., as well as the availability of work in areas in which he or she may actually be qualified to work - but that certainly is not the case in most respects. There is a need for a programme that recognises that in many cases, particularly for people who are longer-term unemployed, people can be quite distant from the labour market and need supports and the requisite amount of time to get them back to a point at which they can more equally compete for jobs. Consequently, I believe the Deputy has touched on two important issues. As for the counting, Ms Bríd O'Brien will correct me if I am mistaken, but a person on a community employment programme is not counted on the live register but is counted under the quarterly national household survey figures because unemployed people in programmes are included in those statistics.