Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Could the Minister of State get us the figures? I would like two sets of figures that are readily available. He knows how many people are on farm assist, how many of those are only getting an individual payment and he knows how many are getting an individual payment plus some dependant increase for a qualified adult, IQA, or a child dependant allowance. Will he then give me the same figures for the current cohort on the RSS and we will see is the balance different.? Therefore, we will have some idea is it acting as an inhibitor.

It is interesting what he said about the 250 places for the reason that ideas we have sometimes take a long time to gestate. He will have heard of Tús. If he gets one of his officials to dig back into the original files of 2010 - he might remember 2010 was not the best year for the economy - what I had proposed at the time was expanding the eligibility to the RSS to both urban and rural people who were unemployed as a scheme based on work rather than a scheme based on training, which CE was. The idea is that if you were a non-farmer, that is, you did not have employment, you would have gone on CE for three years and you would go on to what were to call the "RUSS". The Department of public expenditure, or the Department of Finance as it was at the time, kicked up. They would not allow this change of rule take place and they wanted a new scheme that we called Tús rather than expanding the eligibility for RSS. At the very last minute, in typical Department of Finance fashion, the officials put in a one-year work limit on it. It was meant to be like RSS in that people could stay on it forever because what is the point of throwing them back on social welfare dependancy when the Department knew that unemployment, particularly for the people who have no employment - at least the farmer has some employment - is hugely detrimental to physical health and mental health. It is absolutely lethal. As well as the good for society, we get the good for the individual as well. It saves a lot of medical costs. I remember getting documentation stating that lack of employment leads to higher morbidity and higher mortality but the one great thing about it is employment gives a 99% cure. It is interesting. I welcome that as a pilot. It is very small. It is very ginger but at least it is a start to do what we were trying to do a long time ago.

As an aside, we need to reform Tús because Tús was never meant to be the way it is. I had a choice. I had a gun to my head because there was an election coming up. The Minister of State might remember. The Greens left government and we were up against the wall in January 2011. Did I take the Tús - which the Minister of State would probably say I was right to - with ridiculous rules or not take it all in the hope that somebody succeeding I would manage to bring it back to where we wanted? The Minister of State is doing this a little bit and I welcome that.

I worked in community for a long time. I got more praise for doing it but, as I used often say, it did not put money in the bank. All of us, and society, benefit massively from working.

One of the heartbreaks for me as I decide to retire is that I will miss the interaction of this place. I think everybody benefits from employment. Pride of work and all the rest does not just go for RSS workers. The Minister of State might remember there is also a quotation in the bible that "the labourer is worthy of this hire." I believe we are not treating the RSS workers with dependants as worthy of their hire. He also said that anyone who wants to get on the scheme can get on it. I have no doubt about that. It is open house. He did not say that anybody who has been on it for six years and is under 60 years of age can stay on. I cannot see why they cannot stay on it indefinitely. What is the point in throwing them back on the social welfare? That undermines the stability of farm families.