Mr. Gabriel Kearney:

It comes back to the core issue I spoke about earlier, which is that there is too much of a them-and-us aspect to the scheme. Somebody mentioned there were over 800 schemes, all individually run, because it is the way the Department wants us to be run. It does not want one process of co-ordination of all the schemes. We should break down that barrier. As the Deputy has just said, there are people who are 55 and older who, chances are, will never again get into the active workplace. They will have more importance for society on the social side. We must recognise the benefit of both.

Ms Rohan mentions that schemes must have an activation rate of 20%, 30% or 40% but two thirds of those would be over 55. We can speak all we like about activation but with that cohort of people, there is not a notion of that happening. If we are honest about what we are supposed to do, there are two types of community employment schemes. We can call them whatever we want but there is a community scheme to try to get guys and girls who have lost confidence in themselves, for whatever reason. That is what I thought we were involved with. We give those people some training and put them on their way to further employment. There is also a smaller group of guys for the social side. They are needed for Tidy Towns work and the maintenance of pitches, for example. We should never knock that side of what we do.

There is too much of a fight between us as small companies who are meant to be employing people. We are not doing it really, if we are honest. I am meant to employ Ms Rohan as a sponsor but I do not in reality. If we are being honest about how a scheme is set up, we should call a spade a spade. The Department employs Ms Rohan and she gets all her job descriptions from it. I am suppose to put all that into train. I do my own gig and I have my own company to run. I do this in a voluntary capacity and I am director of a non-profit company called CE in Claregalway. Ms Rohan is really the managing director of that, as Mr. Mahon is with his. That is mirrored in the other 850 throughout the country.

We should have to call a spade a spade and say what they are. We should give them the support the need and the education budget that will bring people from unemployment. Somebody mentioned getting that year down to six months and catching guys not on the live register too long and who get into their own little routines. We all do that. If we catch them at six months, we can, as mentioned by Deputy Ó Cuív, give them proper courses. A self-employed person on a scheme could have the taxman take everything and then we wonder why people do not go on it. We must overhaul the process.

We have the foundation to do this and the sponsors are behind it. Supervisors are keen to bring their participants from unemployment to employment, even if it is social employment.

I can give examples whereby guys in Claregalway were drunk and down and out, because of Covid again, and not talking to anybody but now it is heartening to see them flourish from having work such as mowing pitches or cleaning weeds away from roadways for the local Tidy Towns committee. These people reap the benefits but we, as a society, do not give them a benefit, only because a CE scheme does not belong to a bigger scheme. I mean that the Claregalway scheme is a Claregalway scheme and the same applies to schemes in Annaghdown or Dunmore. I believe that we should link it all together, which is a lovely idea, but we are too afraid, for whatever reason, to bring them all together.