Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for his questions. The first question was on the working family payment, formerly known as the family income supplement. There are two reasons for the reduction there. We spent a considerable amount of money on a publicity campaign this year. That campaign was very well received which I took some comfort from because sometimes one can spend a lot of money on advertising and it totally misses the point. Lots of people told me that they did not know about the payment. They sent me messages on Facebook Messenger asking for more details and so on. This means that the campaign did land and people did hear it, which was good. At the same time, there were lots of people who were working and whose wages increased to such an extent that they were over the threshold for qualifying. The numbers evened out to some extent. Some of the extra 29,000 people who got jobs would have been in receipt of the working family payment. Also, some of the people who were in receipt of the payment had salary increases which brought them over the threshold. A number of new people are in receipt of the payment. It would be interesting to find out at the end of the year how many people who were in receipt of the payment are no longer getting it because of an improvement in their financial position, how many got new jobs and how many are new recipients. I will see if I can get that information at the end of year and if so, I will pass it on to the committee. I believe the aforementioned advertising campaign was worthwhile. Given the number of schemes that we operate, we should probably spend a little bit more on telling people exactly what is available. Lots of people do not know about much of the stuff done by the Department. It might be worthwhile to do that in the future.

On the back to work schemes, as I said already there are 29,000 new workers this year. Some of those people would have been receiving the back to work family dividend but are now in better paid jobs. There is nothing sinister here. All that is happening is that people's circumstances are improving, which is borne out by the SILC data. Indeed, I would like to take this opportunity to welcome the latest figures from the CSO, published this morning. Those figures show that what we are doing and the areas on which we are spending money is having an effect. We are directing resources at the most vulnerable and that is having a positive impact. People's boats are being lifted and buoyed by direct social transfers and changes in labour force participation.

Expenditure on disability allowance is going up because some people who were in receipt of other payments should have been in receipt of disability allowance or an invalidity payment instead. We have become more conscious of that. It is also something that the community and voluntary sector has been helping us with in the last while. When we send people to community and voluntary bodies for labour force participation schemes or community employment schemes, they vet them to assess their suitability and come back to the Department with helpful advice. This is one of the extra strings to the bow of the community and voluntary sector. They come back and tell us that they do not think certain people should be on a jobseeker's benefit or jobseeker's assistance payment but should be on some other payment. We reclassify people on the back of their advice. It is the case that more people are presenting with difficulties and struggles in life, which seems to be contradicted by the fact that we are spending less on activating people. We need to do more in that space. The launch of the Ability Programme took some of the money we were spending on the Vote but that programme is working really well. We probably need to double the funding for that programme. A lot of our funding last year went into the Social Innovation Fund. I was happy to work with industry in the last couple of weeks to encourage it to invest in helping people with disabilities or added stresses in their daily lives but that does not mean that I do not have plans to spend money next year. Obviously this is only compensating for an overspend in other areas.

The youth employment support scheme needs to be refined. The young adults recruited onto the scheme who were ready to be activated and put onto training and work experience schemes did really well out of it. I must thank the participants and the employers who worked with us on the scheme over the last year. An awful lot of the participants got jobs, which is great. However, I must acknowledge my own ignorance in respect of this area because what I had not countenanced or understood was that a huge number of our young people are not ready to be trained or put into an employment environment when they sign up for the youth employment support scheme. We are currently drafting a pre-youth employment support scheme training course. I have done a number of youth employment support scheme recruitment days in the past year and have been struck by the number of young people attending who do not have an ounce of self confidence or self esteem. They are just not ready to be put into an employment environment. We need to do a two to four week pre-youth employment support scheme course with them. Such a course is currently being devised at the moment to help them to realise their talents and skills and to build their self esteem so that they can walk into a work-ready environment. That course will be rolled out at the beginning of next year. I have no doubt that I will spend every penny next year on the youth employment support scheme. I must honestly admit that I did not realise the difficulties being faced by young people. I thought they would not have the same difficulties as people who have been out of the labour market for long periods but they do, unfortunately. Now that we have realised that, we can address it.

It is very easy to think that if we offer free school meals to schools that every one of them will jump at the chance. However, it is not so easy for schools that do not have strong parent association supports or ancillary staff available. We try to work with the schools to address their difficulties. There is a will on the part of all of the schools to participate in school meals programmes, whether they are hot meals, cold meals, breakfast clubs or after-school clubs but some have additional issues which prevent them from being ready on day one when the money is available. We are working with those schools to try to ensure that they take up the offer. Some schools do not want to participate for whatever reason and we cannot force them to do so. At the moment, outside of the pilot scheme for the hot school meals, the cold school meals programme only applies in DEIS schools.

There are plenty of non-DEIS schools that would have loved to have access to the programme but the Vote does not have sanction from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform to do anything other than cover DEIS schools.