Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am not a member of the committee, but I thought it was important that I came down here to offer to my support to the witnesses. I was listening to them on the screen before I came down here; I had been doing something else. If we get anything out of today, we get a sense that there is total frustration. I know this myself on the ground.

Mr. Kearney has hit the nail on the head on a number of occasions on what is wrong, as have Mr. Mahon and Ms Rohan. The important thing is that we have 847 schemes. They are all working in the community. They are not all there to cut grass, as Ms Rohan said. Some of them are involved in mental health services, the Irish Wheelchair Association and all facets of services. However, what has happened is that these organisations have become totally reliant on the CE scheme participants to deliver their services.

Over the last 30 years, the Department of Social Protection has tried to distance itself from responsibility. In Tuam, for instance, we have a CE scheme that is sponsored by Galway County Council. We have one of them in each municipal district. Without those schemes, the countryside, the towns and the villages would look a hell of a lot worse. If the council were to employ people directly to carry out this work, it would cost them an arm and a leg compared to what it costs now.

The Minister announced an extension of the scheme for people where vacancies that could not be filled so that they could continue with the participants that were there. It transpired that was only for 12 weeks. The amount of paperwork that had to be done to try to realise that was so arduous that people said to hell with that and they did without them. I get calls from supervisors and from sponsoring bodies, such as Mr. Kearney’s, to say that they need more people and how to get them.

From listening to what the witnesses are saying, if I were a CE supervisor, I would need to have a lot of skills, including HR skills, health and safety, project management skills and all that goes with that. You need to be a financial guru as well to make sure finances are kept on track. Really and truly, the message today is that the Department of Social Protection needs to wake up and to realise that these schemes will fail and fall over the next ten years. Then we will realise what we have lost. Participants in the schemes are providing great services for society. There are also a lot of positives for the participants themselves.

The job activation aspect is part of it, but when people get to a certain age, they should go to another category within the scheme. People should be kept on in the scheme because they have the skills built up for that scheme. People talk about cutting grass, but that is only the tip of the iceberg in relation to communities. The committee has heard the witnesses. I am not a member of the committee, but I am sure it will be making a strong recommendation to the Minister.

There are no questions that I can ask, because the witnesses have answered all of the questions. I do not want them repeating anything. I must say, that the way they have presented the situation today is exactly what I am hearing on the ground in Galway from the supervisors and the participants. There is a frustration there. The sponsoring groups are frustrated because they just cannot see why in the name of God they are involved in something like this. To go back to what Mr. Kearney said, the most important message to get out is the need for joined-up thinking, the coming together of the supervisors and they being recognised as the catalyst for getting work done on the ground by the Department.

Extending the Tús scheme to two years is a help. These are things that will help. However, there is no point in doing that and creating another layer of paperwork around that so that after year one you have to repeat something and it might take three months to get the paperwork right, which creates frustration.

I will work with the witnesses and with the Chair. As Senator Eugene Murphy said, these schemes are in every parish and we benefit from them. We have to make sure that they are not just taken for granted. What will happen is that the day the grass is not cut or the day that the driver does not show up to the Irish Wheelchair Association, or whatever the case may be, the first point of contact will be Ms Rohan or Mr. Mahon asking where the driver is. They have to answer that. We are leaving them with a huge burden of responsibility. That is not fair and it is not right. I want to thank them for their input and to offer my total support for everything they have said today.