Mr. Brian Smyth:

I will speak about paid versus unpaid roles. There is a long history in Ireland, and we speak about that history, of people being taken advantage of. In the past, people in mental hospitals worked for free on the farms. People were sent out to work on farms. There were more recent episodes in sheltered workshops where people did not have redundancy rights or get the minimum wage. There is a very clear distinction between support and employment. We are very clear in social farming that it is a support placement. We have turned some placements into paid employment. The relationship changes immediately on that happening because people get all of the rights associated with employment, including the right to be paid the minimum wage and redundancy rights. We have a clear line.

There are people who have started work on some farms but other farms look for people for unpaid work. This is why we have a very clear process of informing farmers and participants what is involved. These farmers provide support to people who are very distant in many cases. The progression from social farming places to employment is at a low level at present. Mr. McManus is one instance. He started engaging with us in 2017 and started work at the beginning of this year. We made several attempts to seek paid employment during that time. Mr. McManus moved to employment during his placement. People need an awful lot of support to move along this journey to employment. Since the end of 2021 we have employed someone under the Pobal programme, which Mr. Le Roux spoke about. He is solely focused on bringing people into employment and is working with a cohort of people we have on the books in Leitrim and who are in social farming placements. We also have two individual placement support workers on the mental health side in our company.

People require a level of support and time. Investing in people is the best way of doing that consistently, not short-----