Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

-----adopt budgets that allow managers to hire more outdoor staff so that people can have the good, pensionable, well-paid and unionised jobs to which the Deputy referred. I particularly encourage Sinn Féin to do this in Dublin city.

On Gateway and supplies to any scheme, the initiative often gives somebody something to do every day and a bit of work experience. One will have individuals who might apply for an outdoor job as a general operative with a local authority but he or she will not succeed because he or she has no experience. The Gateway scheme will give a person the experience necessary to subsequently get the job. There is always a role for these programmes.

I have not decided exactly which rules to relax and I am totally open to receiving submissions and suggestions from individuals or committee members. I ask everyone to bear in mind a valid point made by Deputy Brady to the effect that people can get locked into JobPath for 12 months. I advise that people can get locked into a CE scheme for three, six or ten years. I want to relax the rules in a way that will give people who do not currently have the opportunity to participate in CE or on other schemes the opportunity to do so. I do not want to relax the rules in such a way that allows people to get locked in, not just for 12 months but for six and ten years. In the past people got stuck on these schemes and ended up on a never ending cycle of welfare schemes. There is an exception. Part of any reform should recognise the fact that there is a group of people in society who would struggle to hold down a job for lots of different reasons. We should be honest about that and treat them differently. I do not want people locked into schemes. One meets people all the time who genuinely believe that they can never move on from schemes and that they are the only option for them. That is not true. It is important that we do not allow people to be institutionalised on a programme or a scheme because that would not be in their best interests. They sometimes suit the organisation because they become very experienced and good at what they do but it is not the right thing for them.

With regard to the Deputy's question about the carers' claims, we do not have that information to hand but we will give the Deputy that figure when we have it.