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

On the participants in the scheme, I have never agreed with the six-year rule. I am interested to hear that the witnesses favour abolishing it. Another significantly detrimental effect on participants' wages is that they now, net of farm income, get the basic rate. That means that anybody with a partner or children is getting exactly €25 a week for 19.5 hours work. They must be the lowest paid people in the country. Perhaps the witnesses can outline how that is affecting interest in the scheme for people in that cohort. Is it becoming difficult to fill vacancies in the scheme, given that only a finite amount of farmers and fishermen are eligible for the scheme? I would be interested in hearing about that because it is it is a significant hit on people's income. When the scheme was originally devised, once people qualified for the scheme they got the full rate for the job when they were under the threshold in terms of their underlying entitlement to farm assist, jobseeker's allowance, disability allowance or whatever else.

Regarding Tús participants, it was never intended that it be a one-year scheme by the Minister at the time. I was the Minister at the time and I know what I intended. That was a decision made by the Department of Finance. If anyone can remember 2010, it was an achievement to get it through in that particular budget. It is not meant to be an activation scheme, as such. The idea was that people would engage in community employment for three years and if they then failed to get a job they could enter a permanent work scheme like RSS.

There are people who will work very well and happily on schemes, but are unlikely to get commercial employment. It is a myth that everybody in the economy will get commercial employment. Anybody who has worked with schemes like RSS knows that is a reality. These people are doing huge work in society at an economic cost. The biggest complaint I and a lot of my colleague receive is that people want to stay on schemes because they will not get commercial employment and do not want to go back to jobseeker's allowance. They do not want to have the numbing experience of not having a purpose; they want to get up in the morning and go somewhere to do something.

I would be interested in hearing the views of the witnesses on the participants in these schemes and whether there is now a need to reform Tús and its role to what it was originally meant to be, namely, a follow-on scheme. People do training and activation and all the rest. If they failed to get a job, then they go on the scheme. That would not stop people from moving from Tús into commercial employment. If they did not do so, the idea was that they would not be thrown back on the scrapheap.