Ms Geraldine Hurley:

The Deputy asked when was the last time we met those involved in the schemes. We meet them regularly at local level through community development officers. During Covid we set up an overarching forum that met online. It met three times in 2021. It also met in February. The Minister of State, Deputy Joe O'Brien, attended. We have met RSS and Tús supervisors and their unions. We have constant engagement with the unions. We met them several weeks ago on the ex gratiapayment issue. There are also meetings with the Irish Local Development Network and our colleagues in the Department of Rural and Community Development in various fora. There is constant engagement. I hope we will be able to get back to more in-person engagement. Ministers have been able to visit schemes in person more frequently since the beginning of the year and that is very welcome.

The Deputy asked about Ukrainians. As she is aware, under the EU directive, Ukrainians have the same right to access the labour market and labour market programmes as all other EU citizens. The same rules will apply to them with regard to duration on jobseeker payments before they are eligible to participate in programmes. We have been doing a lot of work with Ukrainians in terms of employment supports, ensuring they have information on employment opportunities and matching employment opportunities. We have found that many people coming from Ukraine are highly skilled. Some have language issues. There are opportunities in the open labour market of which they can avail.