Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will raise a number of issues. I agree with the proposal that the LES should be extended to cover the whole country because there are issues in relation to employment everywhere. I have always abominated the situation we had initially when I became Minister, where some areas were covered by partnerships and others were not, even though there is poverty, deprivation, disadvantage or whatever one wants to call it, in all areas.

The witnesses might clarify one technical question for the committee. When do existing LES contracts terminate? Is there a clause within those contracts that allows the State to extend them? There is no point in us making a proposal if people come back to us saying that the contracts legally terminate on a certain date. Can that issue be clarified?

Are ILDN companies interested in taking over or doing the work previously done by Turas Nua, JobPath in other words, and Seetec? Again, we should not bring in multinationals to do this work. It would be much better done by partnership companies where the board would be made up of local people, rather than some big board outside their area. The issue is not whether the companies are technically not-for-profit but, rather, do they belong to the people and are they of the people? That is absolutely vital.

I will make a comment on LEADER. The State is finding it very hard to spend capital funding. If I was in the ILDN, I would instruct all the companies to keep spending and improving until they are out of money and to do it in a year if they can. Then, like Oliver, they can go back and say, "Please sir, can we have some more", because my guess is there will be much more available. We have made spending money so difficult. No matter what the sphere, we will see that everything will have surplus money and everyone will be screaming to try to spend the €10 billion capital. The figures keep indicating the same thing. The Covid pandemic is only part of that problem; our own structure is another.

I will make a comment about Tús. The witnesses are very modest in their request. When Tús was set up, the Department of Finance got at it, as it will get at these things. It was in December 2010, which, it might be remembered, was not a great time. The idea of Tús was to employ on work schemes people who failed to get a job through CE and those who would never be likely to get employment in the competitive labour market. It was never meant to be a one-year scheme.

I would like the witnesses' views on whether they accept there are people who are unlikely to get what I would call competitive private sector employment but who still can perform very useful tasks in our communities that are absolutely required and who do so efficiently and at an economic cost. I put the question that if we were a hell of a lot more ambitious or radical then the witnesses were today - only allowing it for over 62-year-olds - would they be opposed to us? As for the RSS, I abhor and totally disagree with the introduction of the rule changes in 2017 on means testing, which means that people, even those who have partners and families, will get €23 for 19 hours' work a week. That is wrong. How would the witnesses feel if we said to go back to pre-2017 rules that were working perfectly? We are going to run out of people on the RSS.

I will make another point and give a figure I have to hand. I made inquiries about Tús numbers. I presume this is replicated around the country but the witnesses might confirm it. In 2017, in Connemara, Údarás na Gaeltachta had 52 and Forum Connemara 53 work placements. In 2020, those numbers had dropped to 49 and 28, respectively, because the referrals were not coming. If that is an indicator of the rest of the country at a time of the highest unemployment, we have experienced for many years, we have a major structural problem. On SICAP, I note what was said about the drop in budget. We will not go into that because others have covered what I was going to say fairly well.

Finally, and I thank the Chair for the indulgence, I will make three points on digital exclusion. One, people still should be able to get a human being at the end of a telephone for services. Some people will never become digitally included, particularly if they are dealing with State services. They will be able to send an email, watch Facebook, do Zoom meetings and all sorts of things, but they will not feel comfortable doing official business with the State, digitally. Second, would the witnesses back me in stating that people should be able to make phone contact and fill in paper forms if they want? The State puts many burdens on people. It should not stop people insisting on a little extra work if they want to fill in a form the old-fashioned way. It might not be as handy for the State, but the State is not here to be handy for itself; it is here to provide service for the people. Finally, has any analysis been done on badly-written programmes? I keep looking for services digitally and I use many services digitally. I obviously use a computer all day, every day, but some programmes are very badly written, are confusing and create problems for people who are not familiar with them. Those are my issues. Does the Chair want to skip to the next person and let them be bulked in?