Mr. John McKeon:

At present there are approximately 80 to 100 vacancies on community employment schemes. Referrals were impacted by the pandemic. We have extended the duration for which current participants can stay on the scheme until next year to try to manage this issue.

The Minister, Deputy Humphreys, and Minister of State, Deputy Joe O'Brien, are personally engaged with this and I expect proposals to deal with it fairly shortly. One slightly disappointing thing I encourage employment organisations to look at is that they only accept one in five, on average, of the people we refer to them. That is an issue we have to look at as well. The majority of the people we refer to the Tús organisations, by comparison, are taken into their schemes. Community employment schemes tend to be a bit more selective, for whatever reason.