Ms Geraldine Hurley:

I will answer some of those questions before passing over to my colleague, Mr. Kieran. The Senator asked about finding replacements and we have a process in place that my colleague will outline. Where a replacement has not been found, a contract would be extended. We must remember the purpose of community employment and Tús is to train the long-term unemployed person. The persons coming in require that support and training; it is the intervention from community employment. They would not have the same skills as a person who is leaving because that person has had the benefit of that work experience, training and intervention. Schemes are funded to upskill people and give them work experience. There are challenges for schemes when new people come in but that is the purpose of schemes in going back to their original activation purpose.

During the pandemic, there was significant concern about the increase in unemployment among young people, given the potential long-term impact for people who are unemployed at crucial stages of their lives and careers. Thankfully, unemployment levels among young people have dropped significantly. The unemployment rate is now below 5% which is lower than before the pandemic. It is crucial that every support is given to young people who are unemployed to ensure they do not become long-term unemployed. The EU youth guarantee is in place in terms of the intervention. Employment supports are provided by our Intreo offices ensuring that the range of suitable supports are available to young people. Those supports include reskilling, any courses that are provided through the education and training boards, ETBs, or other sectors and our support programmes. If people are still unemployed after 12 months, they can move into community employment schemes. Our objective is to try to ensure that cohort in particular do not get into a situation whereby they move into long-term unemployment. Many young people were employed in the sectors most impacted by the pandemic and unemployment in that group increased to well over 20% but thankfully has now come back to more normal levels. They are a priority group across our employment support schemes. There are specific commitments aimed at that group in Pathways for Work, as well as the EU youth guarantee.

At the end of last year, there was agreement between the Government and the unions representing CE supervisors and assistant supervisors on the long-standing issues arising from a Labour Court recommendation in 2008. That was agreed at the end of December. We are now putting in place the administrative arrangements to make a once-off ex gratiapayment to eligible CE supervisors and assistant supervisors. Those are people who have retired since 2008 and, going forward, people will receive that amount on their retirement. We had to put in place some administrative arrangements in that regard. We will be sending out the application forms to the first group of people in the coming weeks. Once we get those back, we hope to process them as quickly as possible and issue the payments. The total package agreed will cost approximately €24 million. Approximately 2,500 supervisors and assistant supervisors will benefit, of whom 700 will benefit immediately and the others will benefit on retirement, if I have those figures correct. That is progressing. It is a priority for us to issue those payments.

The operational forum that met during the course of the pandemic was overarching across all three schemes. It made sure that other schemes, such as drug schemes, were also represented. Ministers attended the forum. That was for an exchange of views on operational issues and did not deal with human resource or policy issues. We are now engaging with sector-specific groups and will start to re-energise those discussions in the near future. We met with unions representing the RSS and two supervisors in April. We are now revising the terms of reference for those exchanges and will be doing the same on the CE side. Work is ongoing with the unions as we look at the wider issues. The point is that the State is not the employer of CE supervisors or any of the other supervisors so all those discussions are in that context. We are not the employer.

I will pass to Mr. Kieran who will deal with issues relating to the material grant and training.