Ms Bríd O'Brien:

In response to Senator Hayden's questions, the reason the issue of joblessness is so prominent is because we have failed to put social inclusion and equality at the heart of our labour market policies and social protection policies. I refer to both the design and the delivery. Particularly with regard to job creation and access to jobs, during the Celtic tiger years we really did not ensure people who were marginalised in the labour market were given access to employment. The proper structures were not put in place. It was left to schemes such as the community employment scheme to provide the only access to the labour market that existed. For many people, that is still the case. Should our economy and employment pick up at a level we would all love to see, what I describe will again be the reality unless we put equality and social inclusion principles at the heart of policy-making and, in particular, its implementation on the ground. I am very concerned that this is not happening. It has not been acknowledged and, therefore, the issue of joblessness will remain with us even if we manage to get the unemployment figures looking more respectable than they currently do.

It is critical that employment services, which are playing an increasing role in determining who gets on schemes such as the community employment scheme, take responsibility for supporting people in gaining access to employment in the wider labour market. That requires the Department to do a serious sales job with the wider labour market so a wider cross-section of employers can see who has participated in a particular programme and start to make connections. Otherwise, it will be very difficult for schemes such as the community employment scheme to ever pass the active labour market tests because they are dealing with such a range of issues associated with social and economic exclusion. That is often not acknowledged when the scheme is assessed because usually it is assessed only against active labour market criteria. We need to acknowledge that, in many communities, community employment is a key part of the local community and voluntary sector infrastructure. Without it, many services that people regard as public services would not exist.. This role is often not acknowledged.

With regard to income and activation supports, income supports are critical to many households. It is a question of how we design the activation supports that are meaningful and offer people a real choice and support people in progressing.