Mr. Gabriel Kearney:

From the supervisor's point of view, I agree with what the Deputy said about the over-55s and the CE scheme being more centred on educating and redeployment. I think the Government is missing a trick. Much of what I have done with supervisors has a sense of "them and us". The biggest "them and us" view might come out of left field and is that if the supervisors were more linked with the Department of Social Protection, they would be on the same page so that they could get those programmes up and running more easily. The Department is in its own bubble. I am not saying that harshly. It is not linked. It is like what the Deputy said about the two train tracks never meeting. There has to be a closer link between those two parties for the CE scheme in future. The sponsors still get our side of the bargain.

Senator Gavan referred earlier to the different roles. We can get on board with it if we use the type of model the Deputy spoke about, so that the over-55s who are out of the training loop either go into a second part of the CE scheme or to something different. As the Deputy said, the name does not matter. We have 38 people in our scheme. We would focus on retraining them and getting people back into employment. The community will engage with that. People will come into the scheme because they know they will get training. As I said, many training providers are not linking up. We are not getting the courses we need. The back-to-work courses were great in the 1980s but I am not sure if they are great now. There should be more joined-up thinking. The Department and supervisors should get the fighting about the pay claim out of the way. We cannot talk to them until the pay claim, pension or whatever it is is sorted out. There are no better people than those on the ground to know how to get participants back.

Only the guys on the ground will know them. If those guys can become part of the picture rather than outside it, we will have much better CE schemes for the areas and the participants will benefit.