Mr. Conor Mahon:

I thank the committee for its invitation and for the initiating this meeting with our colleague, Ms Annette Hardiman. I will repeat some of what the Chair has said in relation to the purpose and overview of community employment schemes.

The aim of CE is to enhance the employability and mobility of disadvantaged and unemployed persons by providing work experience and training opportunities for them within their communities. In addition, it helps long-term unemployed people to re-enter the active workforce by breaking their experience of unemployment through a return-to-work routine. CE projects are typically sponsored by groups wishing to benefit the local community, namely, voluntary and community organisations and, to a lesser extent, public bodies involved in not-for-profit activities. Such projects provide a valuable service to local communities, while at the same time providing training and educational opportunities to jobseekers.

The Department of Social Protection has the overall responsibility for funding and policy in relation to CE. Its priority in supporting CE is having access to schemes that can provide jobseekers and other vulnerable groups with good quality work experience and training qualifications to support their progression into open labour market employment. For the individual, it gradually reintroduces them into the work environment. People who may be long-term unemployed or who may have left education early can quickly become isolated, insecure in their abilities and can withdraw from society. CE allows such individuals a second chance to work in an environment with the support and guidance of the CE supervisor, who will encourage them throughout their journey.

In a properly run scheme, the work and its quality is a by-product of the process undertaken between participant and supervisor. As the individual’s sense of confidence, inclusion and self-worth improves so too does the benefit to the sponsoring organisation and the broader community. Sponsors of these community groups, who are primarily volunteers, will tell you that without the support of CE, their services would be severely cut or indeed in some cases cease entirely.

The community and voluntary sector are a broad church of sporting organisations, non-profits, charitable organisations, and social enterprises. It is an economy within the broader economy. It comprises a staggering 32,841 different groups, all with wholly different mandates. Recent primary research conducted by Indecon on behalf of The Wheel, Ireland’s national association of community and voluntary organisations, created a model to evaluate the value of the Irish non-profit economy. When total macroeconomic impacts are estimated, charities in Ireland are estimated to have direct, indirect and induced expenditure of €24.98 billion, and to support 289,197 employees. These 2018 data are from The Wheel and Indecon.

In interpreting the data, Indecon notes that all economic activity has an impact on other parts of the economy. This is not unique to registered charities. The evidence also indicates that there are over 300,000 people volunteering. Very few if any of these organisations are not supported or underpinned by community employment, either directly or indirectly. Like the wider sector, community employment is a broad church. No two schemes are alike. Within each scheme, vastly different organisations can be pulled together to form a limited company under guarantee with its sole mandate of running a scheme. We, as CE supervisors, hold a pivotal role in pulling this all together by balancing the needs of the stakeholders in each scheme.

The first of these stakeholders is the participant, who is a long-term unemployed individual. No two of these people are the same. The scheme involves integrating them into an existing workforce, maintaining standards, ensuring their health and safety, coaxing and earning their trust. An individual learning plan is developed and training is researched, found and encouraged. CVs and job-hunting assistance, not to mention all the other holistic interventions, are required. All of this is to ensure that this venture has been a positive in their life. The countless life-changing experiences that supervisors can regale from participants of CE schemes are incredible. CE works as a labour activation tool. Participants do progress into work. All of them progress in their lives because of the holistic approach offered.

There are also the sponsors organisations. Huge governance responsibility has been thrust upon voluntary boards and individuals. Incremental changes mean that this increases year on year. The CE supervisor is in most cases the only full-time employee. Such supervisors are essentially the CEO of the limited company and they take on this burden. We as supervisors must ensure the company’s HR, health and safety, finance, auditing, reporting, policy development and governance duties are correct. This involves balancing the wishes of voluntary organisations within these parameters, ensuring that the integrity of the scheme is maintained and that no unnecessary, even if well-meaning, exposure is risked.

Then you have SOLAS, theDepartment of Social Protection and all the different organisations that have been mandated to run the schemes. The supervisor is their point of contact, ensuring that an evolving remit is adhered to, with up to four audits annually occurring. These include financial monitoring, a training and development audit, an annual external financial audit, with a potential external departmental financial audit. These use newer Department-run IT platforms such as Welfare Partners and Jobs Ireland, which were created to ease the workload and duplication in theory. However, because of the inadequate nature of their design today, CE supervisors have to use both the IT platforms and still manually fill out the archaic paperwork. Instead of the workload reducing, it has doubled.

CE supervisors juggle the diverse needs of all three stakeholders to ensure that all three benefit from the schemes. It is a role that creates huge emotional bonds with our current and past participants, with the volunteer sponsors who employ us, with the organisations they represent and of course with the communities we work in. Because of this emotional attachment and because of the all-encompassing nature of the role, we have not been the best at articulating some of the issues we face that undermine our role and standing.

Here are some of the challenges to the CE schemes. As the Chair mentioned, vacancies and refers have been an ongoing issue for CE schemes. In rural areas, demographic population decline and age profile has also had an adverse effect on CE. Comparable labour activation schemes such as Tús and the rural social scheme, RSS, while similar, had different mandates and supported organisations not within the established CE fold. CE was a self-selecting scheme and a participant choose to come on board. The RSS had its primary eligibility criteria, which meant it was geographically prevalent in certain areas, normally outwith the existence of CE, and Tús was more coercive, because it targeted people who were not engaging in training or labour supports. Names were forthcoming from the Department of Social Protection to the host partnership companies. With the advent of JobPath, they hoovered up the names emanating from the Department of Social Protection. In turn, Tús very much targets the self-selecting participant that was traditionally the forte of CE.

We have outlined the solution. More defined distinctions between the differing labour activation initiatives need to be created, making the more targeted interventions for the cohorts we are supporting. There needs to be more incentive for participants to come on CE. The scheme is not financially attractive to those in receipt of unemployment benefit etc. Changes need to be made to the top-up payments of €25.50. Medical cards, fuel allowance eligibility criteria and increases to same could widen the net, thereby including more participants. Existing entitlements need to remain and not be lost if coming onto CE. In essence, additional incentives need to be added to make CE schemes more attractive and beneficial to participants.

On training and development, due to the ever-changing social issues experienced by our clients and the need for expertise in responding to these, ongoing training localised needs analysis needs to take place. Funding to undertake should be considered. A sum of €250 per year is insufficient in reaching the stated aims of the Department of Social Protection's major Quality and Qualifications Ireland, QQI, awards. Even a cursory glance at costings for a single QQI module would show this. If there were co-ordinated interactions with the education and training boards, ETBs, about training courses they offered, a certain level of feasibility may be achieved cost-effectively. Otherwise, the funding needs to be greatly increased.

On the issue of training hubs and networks, to assist the training development of participants, schemes within a geographical area need co-ordinated network hubs to be created. This would facilitate a broader and more cost-effective sourcing of training. Coupled with ongoing training needs analysis, more targeting and efficient training can be undertaken.

Currently, each scheme operates independently and supervisors often have no idea of or relationships with CE supervisors in their vicinity. This would be very important for peer support, efficiency and sharing of mutually beneficial resources.

As to reducing the one-year qualification rule to six months, early activation on to a CE scheme would have a much better effect as regards experience and outcomes for participants. Reducing the qualifying period from one year to six months would limit the negative effects of long-term unemployment. Referrals could come from early school-leaving initiatives to continue the progression of under 25-year-olds, a very much under-represented cohort on schemes.

I refer to discretion on extending CE placements for those engaged in meaningful training. Unemployed people are on the live register for a number of reasons and many of them face complex issues. For some, it can take time to recover and build a pathway out of unemployment. Training can initially be daunting and the first pathway may not be the correct one. Exploration of different training options is time consuming but rewarding for the individual. Often, just as progress is made, the allowable time lapses. All the good work with the individuals, which is visible on inspection, is lost.

Consideration should be provided for anyone over the age of 55 years to remain on a CE scheme until retirement. This would ensure provision of services for community groups.

On the material grant, with increased vacancies in schemes, it is impossible to accrue the appropriate funding levels achievable from materials budgets. Insurance on a per-person basis is paid regardless of whether a participant is in situ. The increased fiduciary duty placed on sponsors means there are significant auditory costs in order to comply with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform Circular 13/2014. A maximum of €1,500 is allowable under the material grant for audits. The actual cost is nearly double that. The balance must be made up by poorly funded and underfunded voluntary organisations and is a significant burden. The autonomy over the material budget should be given to the sponsor in conjunction with the CE supervisor for identified needs within the scheme and not micromanaged by the community development officer, CDO, or Department of Social Protection, DSP, officials, once all financial policies and procedures are in place and the scheme complies with its annual financial monitoring. The grant value needs an immediate and urgent review. It is wholly insufficient to cover the cost of running a scheme and was so even prior to this inflationary period.

All of this relates to the management and sustainability of schemes but as supervisors, we do not get the opportunity to speak on the issues that pertain to us and it would be remiss of us not to take the opportunity to highlight these three significant issues. To begin, I will quote from the operational manual on the importance the Department of Social Protection places on a CE supervisor, which states, "The quality of a Supervisor can be the single most important factor in the success or failure of a Community Employment Project." CE supervisor contracts are a huge concern. CE supervisors report that they were asked to have a yearly contract signed in place. This issue was previously dealt with, in 2012, by Fórsa, then known as IMPACT, and SIPTU with Mary Donnelly, the Department of Social Protection representative. It was amicably resolved as it was a non-issue. During discussions with the now defunct operational forum, the Department of Social Protection committed to seeking clarity on this hugely important issue for supervisors in conjunction with its legal department in December 2019. We still await the Department's response. The offending piece from the sponsors' operational manual states:

Supervisors (and participants) areexcluded from the Section 9 provisions of the Protection of Employees (Fixed-Term Work) Act 2003 (as amended) as they are “employees with a contract of employment which has been concluded within the framework of a specific public or publicly-supported training, integration or vocational retraining programme” under Section 2 of this Act. This means that CE contracts for Supervisors cannot be of indefinite duration.

Note: No funding will issue from the Department for a supervisor unless they have a valid current contract of employment.

The amendment referred to contained in the Statute Book refers to:

(a) employees in initial vocational training relationships or apprenticeship schemes, or

(b) employees with a contract of employment which has been concluded within the framework of a specific public or publicly-supported training, integration or vocational retraining programme.

The term, "subject to funding", which was agreed as sufficient in the previous meeting with the Department of Social Protection and would be comparable to what Tús supervisors have. There are ample examples of supported training and integration programmes within which the supervisor, manager and employee charged with administration does not need a new contract every year. It is worth noting that the argument always put forward by supervisors is that we should not be part of this amendment and that it is misinterpreted by the Department of Social Protection. It was aimed for those on Foras Áiseanna Saothar, FÁS, training courses and apprenticeships, who were often paid throughout their period of engagement on apprenticeships. It was to preclude them from becoming FÁS employees on completion. It is not as though the trainers or employees formerly within FÁS or within the current education and training boards, ETBs, have one-year annual contracts. This has become an issue for us because we were under the FÁS umbrella. Historically, our belief has been that it refers to the participants on the scheme and not the supervisors.

We wish to suggest a broader solution. As key stakeholders, there is a need for a representative body to be created and on its creation, it should be assisted. CE supervisors are key stakeholders in the CE schemes. They possess an in-depth knowledge of the operational and strategic potential of the scheme and are the glue that holds it together. However, currently the supervisors are not included in any forums that discuss, review or seek solutions and improvements to the scheme. The very successful operational forum needs to be re-established. Many of the issues discussed today used to be teased out between the Department of Social Protection’s policy unit and supervisors until Covid struck and it has not met since. The Minister, Deputy Humphreys, and the Minister of State, Deputy Joe O’Brien, have created a similarly-named forum with different terms of reference and a select invited group that has no linkages to any of the existing scheme networks. We also wish to be included in any further interdepartmental reviews.

Another issue with have is with an enhanced redundancy agreement. Such an agreement was implemented by FÁS and the Department of Social Protection that, in recent years, has been reneged upon. No reason for this change in position has been forthcoming and no medium exists to explore such issues. It was discussed with the then Minister, Senator Doherty, in her previous role. It was substantively parked to give space for the long-running pension issue to be resolved but the Department was to investigate the matter. SIPTU provided evidence, at a meeting on 2 May 2019, to the then Minister that showed her statement on the matter to the Dáil in February 2018 was inaccurate. With the insecurity caused by the contractual issue so prevalent, redundancy is a real and live concern to supervisors.

On pay claims, of the many groupings that have expressed a need for better pay, I am sure that few would have had their last pay increase in 2008. We note that Tús and rural social scheme, RSS, supervisors wish to have their pay linked to that of CE supervisors and want a study conducted to compare the roles. The job specification recommended by the Department of Social Protection to sponsors to use when recruiting all CE supervisors, not just those in drug rehabilitation schemes, is included in Appendix 1 to our written submission. This is a route we took, in which we went as far as the Labour Court, where we won an agreed recommendation, LCR15822, as contained in Appendix 2 to our written submission, to have an investigation into having our pay linked to community training workshop managers. The current disparity between the two grades after missing out on 14 years of increments is worth noting. That concludes our presentation. The appendices are attached to our written submission. I thank the committee for the opportunity to speak.