Mr. Conor Mahon:

There was obviously quite a lot of information from the Deputy. I will try to pick out some of the points and respond. The Deputy raised a point about the distinction between schemes. There was a distinction between Tús, which was created by the Government of which the Deputy was a member, and CE, but with the recruitment of participants. That distinction is greyer now. Participants can now self-select while previously it more a matter of coercive recruitment. It involved people who were not engaged in training with CE or had not self-selected to come onto the scheme. That has changed.

There was an interdepartmental review of CE in approximately 2015. It highlighted a social inclusion mandate and steered the emphasis towards comprising the two streams of labour activation and social inclusion. One of the biggest failings of the Department is that it has not articulated that to sponsoring organisations. The lack of engagement with sponsoring organisations is incredible considering the onus that is thrust upon them. The last time the Mr. Kearney was brought in to the Department of Social Protection was 2018. It is four years since there was a face-to-face meeting between a sponsoring organisation and the Department. In that time, there have been many tweaks to eligibility for the scheme and the mandated involved. Sponsoring organisations, by and large, are there to run the scheme but their primary concern is the mandate of the organisation they are representing. That is the primary mandate of a GAA club, FoodCloud or the African radio station and the scheme is the benefit that arises. Their responsibilities around governance and what governance is expected of them must be articulated to them. There are more than 900 schemes. When we had to come up with plans around Covid-19, each of us had to come up with a policy independently. It was thrust upon us as supervisors and we were going into an area with which we were not familiar. A principal in a school would have got direction from the Department of Education. I was a chair of a board of management in a school. Such a board would be given policy templates and would enact them with slight tweaks to suit a particular school. The governance structure would be there to support the school. We do not get that and have to do it independently. The Department of Social Protection is fearful of taking too much responsibility. It likes to keep us at arm's length. They are almost fearful that if the link - which should be there, as Mr. Kearney said - gets too close, we would be subsumed into the Department. That fear is there. There is need to increase the networks between CE schemes so we are linked in and can support each other.