Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

A process such as this in interesting. As the Minister mentioned in her opening statement, we thought Covid was sorted last February and asked what else could possibly put in on us. It is a testament to the Department how ably it dealt with Covid and how it is responding to the influx of Ukrainians. I echo the Minister's comments praising the hard work of the Department.

How quickly are the Ukrainians coming here accessing their PPS numbers and payment? Does the Department have any information, facts or figures on how quickly they are entering employment? I know a large number of Ukrainians arriving here are very quickly going into employment thereafter. I am interested in finding out a little about that.

Looking through the Supplementary Estimate, a number of issues jumped out. On the very small beans end is the school meals programme. I see there is an underspend within that. I know the Minister is very fond of a meal in the middle of the day for the children involved. If there is an underspend, will the Minister explain it? I know it is a very small line in the context of this budget but I am still interested in having a look at it, if possible.

I understand the reason behind the working age employment supports is that we have had an extraordinary rebound in the economy. We were expecting considerable scarring on the economy with regard to people's entry into employment.

The opposite has happened. We are racing ahead in terms of employment. However, there is a big drop in expenditure on all those things - the community employment programme, the rural social scheme, Tús, the back-to-education allowance. My concern is twofold. Are we preserving the structures? The economy is in good times with employment. We know we will not always be in this situation. Are we doing enough to ensure we preserve the infrastructure? If we have breathing space within those systems at the moment, can we find a way to begin to deploy and refocus those resources into places we know perennially have been employment black spots? There is a number of them in Waterford, for example. As we have breathing space, is this an opportunity to redirect those resources in a very specific way to see if we can tackle some of those more difficult areas?

Subheads B7 and B8 relate to receipts from the European Social Fund and receipts from the National Training Fund. On page 28 of the briefing document, the Minister has outlined the reasons for that. However, what is the knock-on for that? If we are not seeing as much money flowing into the National Training Fund, where does that put us? Does the Minister envisage a problem in 12, 18 or 24 months from now? Should we be taking steps now to safeguard against that?